Soulmates of the Fury
by Commander Argus
Summary: Part 2 of the Trinity Sitch.  Ron and Kim take some desperately needed time off but a friend ends up kidnapped and they have to trust a certain enemy to help get him back.  COMPLETE!
1. Midday in the Garden of Good and Evil

**_Soulmates of the Fury

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_**

**Chapter 1: Mid-day in the Garden of Good and Evil

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**

Savannah, Georgia: River Street

Take a cobblestone street. Add an eighteen year old man getting used to a recent growth spurt. Factor in a bit of natural clumsiness.

Result: Ron Stoppable wondering how the ground had suddenly risen up to smack him in the chin.

There was a time when the hand reaching to help him up would have been accompanied by the words "Quit playing around, Ron!" but this time there was just a smiling face framed by auburn red hair. He managed a sheepish grin as Kim helped him to his feet.

"They really should pave this." He griped.

"Historic district, hello?" she said, rolling her eyes as she took another bite out of the caramel apple the two were sharing.

River Street was quite literally built on the banks of the Savannah River. One side of the street gave a mostly unobstructed view of the river, while the other was dominated by very old buildings built halfway up the bluff. The majority of the city was built on top of a natural bluff, some 40 feet above the river. The buildings were constructed so one side would open to a long line of parks and a service street called "Factor's Walk" halfway up. The other side now housed dozens of gift shops and restaurants catering to the large tourist crowd in the small southern city. In the distance you could see a modern suspension bridge arching high over the water, tall enough to allow monstrous container ships to reach the docks up-river. The bridge was obviously quite new, with the cables all wrapped in a white material. At night huge lamps would light the bridge up.

The two teens had not seen that yet. They had only arrived in the city a few hours ago, parking Kim's PT Cruiser in one of the city decks. Savannah wasn't their final destination for the day, but with Tybee Island only about 12 miles away, they decided to spend some time in the historic city before meeting their host in the nearby beach community.

She passed the apple back to Ron, who turned it until he could get a great big chunk of caramel with his bite. Strings of sugary tan goodness stretched from the treat to his mouth. Kim stopped and helped him clean his face off. "Hey, save me some." She chided.

"More where this came from." He pointed to a display in the candy shop they were walking past. Candy apples of all sorts were lined up behind the glass. The sweet smell of fudge and pralines cooking in copper vats dominated the air.

"Don't fill up! Remember, Neil said that place he's taking us to tonight brings out more seafood than you can possibly imagine."

"I dunno, KP, I can imagine a lot!"

"Ron, if you make yourself sick I'm going to be the one embarrassed. Now, what if Doctor Drakken were to try and infect me with that orchid pollen again. You'd knock me right out of existence!"

As if on cue, Ron stopped and let out a grinding belch, spraying little bits of apple. "What, me embarrass you? Nah!"

Kim just put her forehead into her free hand "Aacch!" she said, shaking it slightly.

Their attention was diverted when a mighty "PWOOOOOOOMP" announced the passage of a huge cargo ship, containers in every color of the rainbow (but mostly burnt orange) stacked to the sky. The ship was so full only the barest hint of her waterline was visible.

"Wow, is that even going to clear the bridge." Ron wondered.

"Of course it is. That's why they built the new one. Look, right behind it, can you see the old pilings?" She pointed to the series of concrete blocks behind the new span, describing the arc of an older bridge. It was almost spooky, as if it were a ghost of the now-removed span.

"Why didn't they remove them when they built the new one?" Ron asked.

"I don't know, maybe they thought it'd do more damage trying to take them out than leaving them. Come on, I see a clothing store I want to look in."

Vacations were not something to be taken lightly by the pair. It seemed that every time they got a moment to themselves a four-note electronic beep would interrupt them. Day trip to Lake Middleton? _Beep-beep-de-beep!_ Afternoon at the mall? _Beep-beep-de-beep!_ A quite drive in the country – you get the picture. Even their senior prom went south – WAY south! Señor Senior Sr. managed to acquire about a thousand Lil' Diablo bots and reactivate them on the outskirts of Mexico City. This time, Global Justice hover jet or not, there was no getting back to Middleton High School in time.

There was also the issue of one more ruined prom dress. Diablo bots, two, Club Banana, zilch.

It had gotten so bad that after being interrupted just walking in the park holding hands Ron grabbed the Kimmunicator out of Kim's hands, almost in a Fury. She was afraid her best friend and boyfriend was going to dash the little device against the sidewalk in his rage. Instead he calmly informed Wade that the two of them were off-duty tonight and would be available for calls tomorrow. Despite being shocked what Ron had done, she was secretly proud of the control he exercised over his anger.

Wade got the message – as did Doctor Director, who had simply been calling them to follow up on a recent mission. She came to the same conclusion their young computer guru had.

Those two needed some time off.

It didn't come quickly. While the rest of the graduating seniors fanned out all over the country on vacations celebrating their commencement, Kim, Ron and Wil Du found themselves chained to a stone wall inside one of the Great Pyramids of Giza. The Egyptian sun was so not good for Kim's fair complexion! When they got out of that (mostly Ron's doing – to Agent Du's amazement) Ron teased her about a series of sun freckles that popped out on her face.

She obsessed about that for a couple hours until he explained how cute they were on her. Still, she was happy when they faded once more. She noted that, in the future, all desert ops would include sunblock of SPF 50 or better!

Kim's PT Cruiser was a graduation present from her parents. That in itself led them to an idea. Something neither teen had ever done!

They started planning a cross-country road trip!

That led to a couple complications. For one thing, it would be the first un-chaperoned non-mission trip the young couple had ever been on. Despite being high school graduates, both of their birthdays were in the middle of summer. On both of their parent's insistence, they would wait until then to make their trip. It was nothing to do with whether they trusted them – they had now been together for over a year and their trust had been earned over and over again. No, it had much more to do with how they rest of the world would treat them. There really was a difference between two seventeen year olds and two eighteen year olds traveling together. Trust aside, Kim's father had a long-long talk with Ron and it was quite reasonable that ultra-dense celestial objects were mentioned in the conversation.

Then there was the fact they were Team Possible. They were the best at what they did and all too often the world relied on that. Somehow they needed to pry themselves away from all that.

Senior year had been a transition for Ron. Not only did he grow six inches but he also grew up a lot. Part of it was the influence Kim had on him, but the greater part was histransmutation into adulthood. He now stood eye-to-eye with Doctor James Timothy Possible and was actually taller than his own father. Along with his increased stature came an increase in confidence and ability. A month-long trip to Japan had honed his skills exponentially. He was still nowhere near the martial artist Kim was, but he was no longer just a distraction. That didn't mean he still didn't trip from time to time. It was almost like there were two Rons, the new teen hero and plain old Ron.

They both carried Kimmunicators now. For a short while they tried referring to his as a "Ronnunicator" but that just felt weird – a combination of an awkward name and deja-vu they couldn't place. In time, they were simply Kimmunicators, since Kim was and probably always would be the team leader. The devices were now smaller, made out of matching royal blue PDAs instead of a hand-held game console. Wade assured them he could have made them even smaller, but the screens would have been too small to see.

Somehow not bringing the devices on their trip would have just seemed wrong, almost like ignoring a great responsibility. Kim's was in her purse and Ron had his in a leg pocket of his cargo shorts. Amazingly, in the three days they spent crossing the continent they had only rung once, and fortunately, that had only been Monique trying her best to get Kim to spill about Kim and Ron's Excellent Adventure.

Unbeknownst to them, Wade had deactivated his link to their Kimmunicators for the duration of the trip. Only an emergency call would restore the connection. They were, for all intents and purposes, now only very fancy cell phones. All of this was on Dr. Director's strict orders, orders including a directive that only if the two teens were in imminent danger would they be contacted. Through a stroke of pure luck, that had held.

So far.

They had stayed at a succession of motor lodges as they crossed the country. Ron had enough allowance money from his Naco royalty trust fund to put them up in style, but there was something about staying in tiny little rooms in out of the way places that appealed to them. It allowed them to behave like a real couple, instead of a couple of jet-setters.

Two days in Ron's Kimmunicator rang. The new units had different ring tones to differentiate between emergencies and just friends wanting to reach them. The audio call was unexpected but certainly not unwelcome. They quickly diverted from Washington DC down Interstate 95 to the city near the coast of Georgia. The place was know for its beauty and that appealed to them. Savannah and Tybee Island were two of the very few places they had never been.

They started out by wandering around the city itself, visiting the squares, listening intently as open-air tour busses trundled about, eager guides telling the story of this house or that square. They even got a helpful gentleman to take a picture of them as Chippewa Square where the park bench scene of "Forrest Gump." Was filmed.

They capped off the day with a walk on River-Street before heading back for the parking deck.

It would be very difficult to get lost in Savannah. The city was laid out in the very old way, on a grid pattern instead of the random, swooping curves they were accustomed to in their home town. A long, straight road led them out of the historic district. They passed a bicycle trail lined with palmetto trees and a long stretch of marsh. The only hill they climbed was a high bridge, from which they could see a Civil War era masonry fort and a tiny white lighthouse on its own tiny little island. Ahead they could see the taller Tybee Island lighthouse peaking above the trees.

Ron pulled out a set of instructions and slipped into his job as navigator. He learned very quickly that driving the car was Kim's job. He felt a bit weird not doing the driving himself, as his father had always done the family driving, but after a heated argument (no couple ever has been so perfect they don't fight) he relented. Of course, if it had been his car…

The house wasn't on the beach itself. It sat on brick pilings with the bottom open to the air. It wasn't as high up above the ground as the others close to the beach, but it still had the traditional screened porch look that the small oceanfront properties often boasted.

There was a note pinned on the screen door.

_Kim and Ron_

_I had to drive to Hilton Head to take care of some business. Make yourselves at home. I'll be back later tonight, so if you'll accept a rain-check, we'll go to the Crab Shack tomorrow night._

_See ya._

_Neil._

"I wonder what that's about?" Kim said, frowning slightly

They made quick work of unloading the car, though Ron did find time to grumble. "Does saving the world take this much stuff?"

"Quiet you." Kim said playfully. "At least I don't haul around as much stuff as Yori did." She never quite got exactly what the two of them were hauling to South America that time they went after Monkey Fist to save their Sensei.

"Why exactly did you bring your grappler" he held up the red pistol shaped object, pulling the trigger.

Instead of a sharp hook and a length of cable, it only made quiet whooshing sound.

"Okay, genius here has found the real hairdryer." Kim said as she took it away from him.

They found dinner at another local place, an open patio restaurant called Sting Ray's and made a quick circuit of the town as the sun sank behind the island.

It occurred to them that they were actually quite dead on their feet.

There had still been no word from Neil so they settled into the battered over-stuffed couch in the living room of his house.

Both of them fell into a deep slumber almost instantly.


	2. Don't it Make My Brown Eyes Green?

_**Soulmates of the Fury**_

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**II. Don't It Make My Brown Eyes Green**

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Kim was the first to wake up, instantly knowing there would be a price to pay for their folly. Ron's arms were around her bare waist, his head lolling at an unnatural angle. She groaned for his sake, knowing he would probably go through the day with a serious crick in his neck. They hadn't intended to sleep on the couch but it was so cozy and comfortable and they were so worn out from walking all over Savannah and Tybee that it lulled them into the deepest of slumbers. Kim stretched an arm out, then her legs, slipping out of Ron's grasp. He snorted and snuggled a little further down into the cushions, but didn't fully awaken. She rolled her head around and stretched as if reaching for the high ceiling. She was stiff, but poor boyfriend was going to get the worst of it. She made a mental note to rub his shoulders down really well once he woke up.

It was light outside, but not very bright. She went back out onto the screened porch. A light rain was falling. The sun was up, but it was obscured by the thick gray clouds. Despite being high summer it was very slightly chilly, as if the rain had sucked the heat right out of the air. Her face flickered into a slight pout, only a little one, not her famous (or is that infamous?) Puppy Dog Pout. Why waste such a thing of power on the weather? She always said she could do anything, but she sure couldn't make the rain come and go. (Unless she had a little help from the good scientists at the Middleton Institute of Technology!)

Something was carried on the gentle breeze. She traced it back through the living room just in time to hear a loud "SNOOOOORK" from Ron, who curled up tighter on the sofa, pulling the blanket over him. She realized that somebody had covered them during the night. There were even a couple pillows on the floor near where their heads had been. Somebody tried to make them comfortable during the night.

What time did Neil come in? For such a large man he must have been quiet as a mouse not to wake her. Ron could sleep through a train wreck but Kim was used to being awakened at any hour and was a feather touch in sleep. She looked around the room. The living room was the center of the house, with four bedrooms radiating outwards, making up the outer walls of the actual house. The porch wrapped completely around the building except for the kitchen, which had its own door leading directly outside. Four bedrooms and we end up sleeping on the couch? Oh joy!

Deliberately sharing a bed with Ron was a new thing for her. Sure, they had ended up asleep together on many occasions, but that was on missions or just happy accidents on a couch like the previous night. They weren't doing anything but actually sleeping but somehow the act of curling up with another person to take your rest was a deeply intimate act in its own right. She wondered about other things, but that would wait. There was a time and a place and they hadn't reached that yet.

Kim had always envisioned couples holding each other close all through the night. That was well fine and good in a well air conditioned house but the first nights of their trip were another thing all together. Small rooms with small beds and air conditioning units that would either turn the room into an icebox or would barely wheeze enough to make sleep possible at all. They quickly learned that two bodies huddled together under the sheets in early August got overheated very quickly, and not in a good way! Ron would end up sleeping on top of the covers and Kim would wrap herself up as her body cooled during the night. When there were two beds they quickly separated. Sharing a bed on a regular basis would take practice!

It was firmly decided that their next room would have a king-sized bed! At least until they got the call from Neil.

Kim realized the tantalizing smells were actually coming from the kitchen. The light was on and her mind was starting to identify the separate components of the odors coming from inside. Bacon, for sure, mixing sweetly with the smell of fresh brewed coffee. Eggs, yes, eggs, most likely scrambled with cheese. Oh, but if Rufus was here instead of staying with "Uncle" Wade! She pushed her way through the door leading into the combination kitchen/dining room.

A petite woman with an athletic build was at the stove, her back turned to Kim. Her long black hair was gathered into a ponytail high up on her head. She was wearing cut off denim shorts and a dark colored T shirt that contrasted with her porcelain doll-like peach colored skin. She turned to Kim and smiled, her brown eyes gleaming in the kitchen light.

"Dona?" Kim said in surprise. The woman from another dimension was the first to come to mind when she saw that face.

"Bzzzzzzt. Guess again, Kimmie!" She said, the smile deepening into a wicked grin.

"Shego?" The look on her face slipped from shock to wary anger.

"In the…flesh." She said, showing her now normal colored arms. Ever since Kim had known the older woman, her skin had been a very light green, her eyes bright emerald, brighter even than Kim's green eyes. Even her raven black hair seemed to have a greenish cast. All the result of being exposed to the mutagenic radiation of a rainbow colored meteorite in her early teens.

What had happened to her? She looked completely normal!

Kim dropped into a ready stance, prepared for the fight that always came when the two women caught sight of one another.

"Ah-ah-ah!" Shego singsonged, wagging her forefinger from side to side. "Neil's house rules. Neutral territory and all in his home. He told me to expect you two."

"Where is he?" Kim asked, an edge still in her voice.

"Never came home last night. Nothing to worry about there quite yet, he does that sometimes. I'm sure _you_ can relate, Kimmie."

"Came home? Does that sometimes? Are you two…" Her eyebrow arched upwards. She knew Shego had a history with Neil Argus, but that had apparently ended some years ago when she turned to evil, betraying her brothers and Neil in the bargain.

"Uh, no, not really." Did she actually blush? "He's just been helping me." She held out her hands. It seemed so strange to see her hands bare with no razor tipped gloves. "As long as I don't power up my skin stays normal looking. His powers are still developing but he can help my appearance turn back to normal. So, I can look like this again, at least until I flare up. Then it's back to "Miss green thing" until he can change me back."

"Sounds like it puts a crimp in your 'Take Over the World' plans."

"Ye-ahh, tell me about it! Neil keeps telling me I can either be pretty or 'Evil Greenie' like I've got some choice in the matter." The familiar snarkiness was creeping back into her voice.

"You mean you don't have a choice?" She asked as Ron entered the kitchen.

He looked at Shego, then at Kim, then back to Shego, his jaw hanging open. His voice managed just a tiny squeak "Shego is in the kitchen making omelettes?" as he pointed at her.

"It's okay, Ron." Kim said, placing a hand on his chest in case he decided to go on the offensive. "Apparently Neil made her declare a truce here so he can help her."

"More like he didn't want the two of us wrecking the place. He's going to be making payments on this place for the rest of his life, if his little bike shop even makes it." Kim knew about the shop. Neil finally resigned as the manager of the old shop in Charlotte and bought a much smaller, one-man shop in "Downtown" Tybee Island. For a man who was supposed to be the cornerstone of some celestial Trinity, fated to save not only this world but many others, his real personal dreams were much simpler. Ron pointed it out to her the night before. They peered into the windows at the dozen or so custom beach cruisers that made up his stock.

From secret teen hero and sometimes Global Justice operative to beach-town bike merchant and happy for it. Maybe simple dreams were sometimes the best!

"Okay, what did you mean by not having a choice?"

"We've already been over this, Princess. I'm _evil_, plain and simple. The sky is blue, the grass is green, I'm evil. Just facts of life. Now, if it weren't for Neil, I'd have at least tied the two of you up good and proper when I came in last night."

"You saw us on the couch?" Something clicked in her head. "YOU COVERED US UP?"

"Awwww, but you two looked sooooo cute together. If it weren't for the fact I didn't do something nasty to you, I'd have taken a picture and posted it on EvilGeniusArt dot com. Or emailed it to your Daddy!"

"You _are_ still evil." Ron muttered.

"What about Doctor Drakken?" as far as Kim knew, he was still in prison, this time with daily checks to determine if he had switched places with a synthodrone or other kind of clone.

"_Don't say that name!_" Shego hissed at her. For an instant it seemed like green fire was creeping back into her eyes. She calmed herself as they slowly faded back to rich cocoa brown.

Kim and Ron looked at each other, wondering.

* * *

_Very early that morning:_

It wasn't Hilton Head Island. That had been a fib left in case other eyes happened upon that note. He wasn't far from the resort, but he might was well be worlds away. Away from the sandy beaches of Tybee and the tourists of Savannah, the Low Country was mostly swamp. In fact, once you crossed the Tallmadge Bridge, you left the city behind in favor of the marshes of southern South Carolina. Swamps were a great place to hide things.

Neil wanted to strangle Dr. Director. What part of 'retired' did she not understand? Never mind that the 'retiree' was twenty four years old. This "Teen" hero thing was best left to real teens! He'd been all too happy when his former 'sort of' boss called wanting his help giving Kim Possible and Ron Stoppable some really good R&R time. His place was an old "Party Shack" with plenty of bedrooms, so he had the room. He could even wink and nod if Kim's father decided to pay a call and say quite truthfully there was plenty of space for the teens to each have a room to themselves. He was eighteen once!

The events of his eighteenth year surged back to the forefront of his mind. The pain and stiffness in his left ankle were gone for good, but the memory of it would be with him forever. The pain was unimaginable and that pain did not go away quickly. There were times when he wished he could just blast his leg off just above the injury. The pain, despite the medicines they tried to give him, was that bad.

Then came the physical therapy. On splintered bones that despite three operations would never heal completely properly. Some pain you could learn to live with. This kind of pain comes at you day after day, with the horrible knowledge that it would be there again tomorrow.

It didn't help that the cause of that pain was at his home now, living with him. She had been a high-school sweetheart, his first love. Theirs was the kind of love that children felt would last forever. He knew from the moment he first laid eyes on her at the "Go City" high school Global Justice had set him up in. They were both fourteen and he instantly believed in love at first sight. It's easy to believe when it happens to you.

He saw her descent into madness, though he couldn't make himself believe it. Wasn't denial a wonderful thing? In hindsight, it was all plain as day, but he missed it. Hell, even her brothers missed it and they weren't the ones 'in love' with her. Still, they were just as hurt by her final betrayal as he was.

Trust. How can you trust someone who betrayed you? How can you leave them in your home, knowing their greatest enemy of all time would be coming to share that home with her, even for a few days? How would she fare against the temptation to use her powers and do harm to the unsuspecting couple? No, he would trust her. If he ever wanted to help her the way he wanted to he would have to make that leap of faith. He would have to believe she could behave herself. Well, then again, Kim Possible could pretty much take care of herself where Shego was concerned.

Then there was the harder question. Did he love her? He honestly couldn't answer that. Sure, there were moments of tenderness between them. There were kisses, embraces…even passion sometimes. Then there were those moments when their eyes would meet. Something would pass between them as if the old cliché about eyes being a window into the soul was actually true. There was something between them, though he couldn't quite say whether it was really love.

Betrayal can do that to a relationship.

Head in the game, Argus, he chided himself. Retired. I'm supposed to be retired. Yet there was that familiar voice on the phone that afternoon at his shop. He growled a response at the woman but couldn't in good conscience ignore her either. The store was empty so he washed the grease from his hands and closed up. Most of the tourists came through in the morning, nodding appreciatively at the fantastic and improbable machines that decorated his floor. The real source of his income was behind the counter. A battered, rusting beach cruiser was clamped into the stand, waiting for the customer to come and pick up. Well, it was close enough to closing time and a front was moving in. It would be raining by morning and they wouldn't be able to ride until later anyhow.

That voice was why he was here now. He moved with a liquid grace that belied the intervening years. His ankle no longer bothered him. The bone had been fused, healed by the touch of a man who was at once him and not him. Healed with the knowledge that he would one day be able to do that himself. It wasn't magic, though there might not be any difference. What was magic if not just what science has not yet found a way to explain. He was dressed head to toe in black. It was a battle suit, made by Kim's tech guru, Wade but it was different from the earlier models. For one the color! Gone was the white highlighted with luminescent blue. That was fine for a straight up the middle, take 'em head on kind of gal like Kim. Neil was 'old school.' It was all about stealth. While she was constantly in the headlines, nobody outside of GJ and Kim's circle of friends even knew about him.

The compound was new, but it was designed to look very old. From the outside it looked like some tumble-down Gullah shack. That was only the entrance. Many, many dollars had been spent building something in the thick muck. He could only wonder how they could hold back the marsh long enough to build anything, let alone the facility he had diagramed on the back of his wrist. No matter, it was here, just like Dr. Director said it would be.

It bothered him that he was going up against an organization that was supposedly part of the FBI. It helped that Director explained they had gone rogue, acting as if the laws of the land didn't apply to them any more. This "Special Unit" was moving ahead with their plans, no matter what innocent people got hurt. It was up to Neil to stop them.

Maybe that's why I'm here? GJ couldn't move against them openly, rogue unit or not.

Just hope I'm not too rusty!

* * *

Matt 3671 - Thanks for the first review here at FF. Guess I've got to say something smuffy involving small red fruit, if you know what I mean. I don't live in Savannah, but I sure like to visit there (still couldn't really imagine living there full time) It's a good 5 hour drive to get there from here but I've only been there twice (most recently last July) I highly recommend it! 


	3. Life's a Beach

_**Soulmates of the Fury**_

* * *

III. **Life's a Beach**

* * *

Kim folded the corner of he page she was on and closed the book. She spared a look out at the surf where Ron was trying his best to use a boogie board, with varying degrees of success. At least he looked like he was having a really good time. He seemed to look right in place here at the beach. The sight of him pedaling a batter old red beach bike with the short board under one arm, his short blonde hair and knee-length trunks flapping in the breeze, looked like something right out of an old beach-blanket movie. She reached into her beach bag and checked a tiny digital watch. Sunblock or no, both of them were very fair skinned and would burn quickly in the bright coastal sunlight. Just in case, she squirted some lotion on her fingers and smoothed it onto her face, hoping to keep her childhood freckles from making another unwanted appearance. Cute or not, Ron had enough freckles for both of them.

The morning showers had ended by the time breakfast was done and cleaned up. Sitting down to a meal with Shego was beyond awk-weird. How do you make small talk with someone who literally tried to kill you? At least she was apparently abiding by the truce Neil Argus somehow forced on her. Something more important that her war with Kim was driving her. Was it just the appearance thing or did it go deeper? When Ron offered the blessing she actually bowed her head respectfully. That was so surreal.

The cool rain gave way to a hot, bright morning. She was thankful for the chance to get out of the house. They changed into their swim suits and availed themselves of tow of Neil's many bikes. Since he lived near the lighthouse they made that their first stop. If it were not for the towering black and white landmark they were sure to have gotten lost. The sentinel was not the tallest on the East Coast, but the view from the top was spectacular. You could see the entire island from the observation deck.

"I can see our car from here." Ron said, pointing at the reddish shingle roof of Neil's house. She smiled, thinking warm thoughts when he referred to her car as "Our car."

They quickly discovered the climb down was worse than the ascent, leaving their legs feeling like jelly. They spent some time exploring the restored keeper's buildings letting their legs recover before reclaiming the bikes.

She turned over, lowering the back of her lounge chair till it was level with the rest of the chaise. Fifteen minutes more, then we'll head in she told herself. She let the shoulder straps of her once piece suit slip down a little to even out what little tan she had.

"Hey, pretty lady, want me to put sunscreen on yer back for ya?" Someone asked with an obviously exaggerated southern accent.

Kim looked up at the source of the voice. The man was an even six feet tall, brown hair hanging almost to his shoulders. A small, square beard punctuated his otherwise clean shaven face. He was at least fifty pounds lighter than he had been a year ago, but he was still a big man. He was dressed only in dark yellow knee length trunks and black sport sandals. Behind him trudged a bikini clad Shego, sour expression and all.

"Neil!" Kim exclaimed cheerily. "Why of course you can rub some lotion on my back, especially if it sends my boyfriend into fits of jealousy." Shego just shook her head as if in disgust at the exchange.

"How-ya been doin', Red?" He asked genially.

"Please, please don't call me 'Red,' you sound just like Motor Ed when you do that.

"Seriously?"

"Urrrrgh!" She hurled a handful of sand in his general direction.

"NEIL, MY MAN!" Ron screamed, running up the beach, still dripping from the warm murky waters of the Georgia coast."

"Ronster! So that's where my board got to!" He said, gesturing at the red boogie board.

"Sorry, thought I'd give it a try."

"Hey, no problemo dude. Like I said, make yourselves at home. ¡Mi casa es su casa!" he added in stilted Spanish. "Sorry about last night."

"Yeah, where'd you get to last night?" Kim asked, propping herself up on the chaise.

"I drove up to around Hilton Head to help out a friend and I ended up shuttling back and forth to Charleston. Just got back about an hour ago, so I thought I'd come down here and spend some time with you guys before I have to open my shop."

"Those cruisers at your place are a far cry from that Badical rig you left in Middleton last year." Ron said.

"Yeah, but unless you get a sand spur in the tire, you don't have to do very much to these things. I left it in Middleton? I'll be darned, after that escapade I completely forgot about it. That was a good bike, but it wouldn't last a month here at the beach. Heavy steel one-speeds are the order of the day out here. Leave 'em outside in the rain, they're fine. Ride 'em out on the beach, they're fine. It'll take years for one of those heavy steel frames to rust through and by that time I'll have another new one at the top of the heap."

"There were some really fancy bikes in your shop." Kim mentioned.

"Yeah, that's the other aspect of the business here. I don't get the fancy mountain stuff except when some tourist pops a tube or something, but the kids here get pretty wild with their cruisers. Some of them weld up their own custom stuff, while others get me to order up a fancy frame and spec it out with all kinds of 'look-at-me' junk. I'll sell maybe one or two of those things a week, the rest of the time I spend replacing bad tubes and rusted out chains."

"Doing good?"

"It's a living."

"If you call spending almost every dime you make there on your mortgage and sometimes having enough left over for food a living." Shego said icily from her lounge without looking at them.

"I do well enough. You're just upset I won't buy you that expensive beer you like Sheeg."

"Sheeg?" Ron tittered. Even Kim had to stifle a giggle.

"Laugh it up, you two. You're just saving up for what I'm going to do when I run into you off this island." Neil shot her a glance that said 'knock it off' though they didn't know if she even had her eyes open under the dark sunglasses. Kim suddenly realized that Shego had now twice indicated her concern about Neil's financial situation. She said rather emphatically the two of them weren't officially together, but it seemed like she had been living in his house for some time. One of the four bedrooms was clearly occupied by a woman and looked well lived in. Neither of the two kept a very neat room.

Kim also noted there was no sign of Shego's customary green and black jumpsuit.

In fact, it seemed like she was going out of her way to avoid green in her wardrobe. Her bikini (what there was of it) was dark maroon. Yes, something was definitely up with the slightly older woman, but she was not yet ready to discount that all this might just be an elaborate act.

There was also the fact Shego was technically a fugitive!

Sometime between their Junior Prom – the night of Drakken's Diablo attack – and mid-summer a year ago, Shego and Drakken managed to escape from prison. The authorities weren't aware they were gone at first, as they had substituted quite well-crafted Synthodrones at the special federal facility where they were being held. At the same time they were trying to steal an advanced fighter ship from the future an accident at the prison revealed the true nature of the fabricated prisoners. Drakken simply melted.

That whole fiasco ended with Doctor Drakken back in prison and Shego disappearing with an escape pod to places unknown. It was unfortunate that Drakken couldn't be charged with his insane scheme this time, as the existence of a spaceship from the future of a parallel universe could not be presented in a court of law. At least he still had the rest of his previous sentence to serve, plus extra time for his escape.

Somehow this time Shego and Drakken's parting was not the result of GJ troops separating them but something that had transpired between the two. Just that morning she responded with absolute venom at the mere mention of his name.

Neil suddenly sprung up and started sprinting toward the water. "Last one in loses the boogie!" He shouted as Ron took up the chase.

* * *

"Nicest thing about running a bike shop in a resort town like this! Setting your own hours!" Neil boasted as Kim and Ron surveyed the inside of his shop. "Pretty much if nobody's here by five, I lock up and head for the beach."

"So, what's up with 'Sheeg?'" Ron finally asked.

Neil considered the question for a moment, then finally sat on a stool behind the counter. "Don't mention any of this to her. All her bluster aside she's got some real emotional issues rattling around in all that black hair.

"She showed up here about six months ago as I was moving in. I mean, she was a real basket-case. Said I was the only person she could think of to turn to. Needless to say, she spent the first few weeks all worried I was going to turn her in. Granted, I had to think really long and hard about whether I should or not."

"Why didn't you?" Kim asked. "Considering what she did to you."

"I guess, hmmm, I guess I just didn't see her as that big a danger. Not in the condition she was in." He noted Kim's stare. "Now, I know how the two of you got along, I just wasn't there for all of that. I also had this idea I could some how help her regain some of who she used to be. Helped that I figured out how to modify her appearance."

"How did you do that?"

"Oh, it's part of those psychokinetic mumbo-jumbo my other self told me about. I think it's related to the healing powers, or summich. Nothing else has popped up, but Jimmy was like thirty six years older than I am now, so it's not like all this is going to develop overnight. Just like your Mystical Monkey Power, Ron."

"How did you?..."

"GJ, dude. Doctor Director emailed me your whole jacket before you got here. Standard procedure and all that."

"For a beach trip?" Kim asked, confused.

"An officially sanctioned GJ sponsored retreat." Neil corrected. "I get reimbursed for my expenses. Hey, I like being generous, but I ain't stupid."

Kim had to giggle. Just like Global justice to require forms, authorizations and procedures, even for a vacation.

"So, do they know about your other houseguest?" Ron asked.

"Uh, no, I kinda think they'd put us _both_ under the prison if they knew about that."

* * *

The young woman huddled in the corner of her room. The people in blue jumpsuits were kind to her, but she still felt like a prisoner. At least they weren't like the black-suited men who had been holding her. The brought her food and gave her fresh clothing to replace the tattered punk outfit she had worn for so long. They let her shower and even offered to have a physician come in and check her out.

One moment she had been trying to steal some food in LA, the next she was bound and gagged on an airplane headed for that foul, moist place. She didn't know then where she was, she didn't know that she was almost three thousand miles from where she had been. She only wanted to get something to eat, something to survive on. She had been like that since she left the others behind in New Mexico. Why had she left them? They were kind to her and she wasn't their prisoner. Her old friends, if you could call them that, only kept her around because she was part of the whole. After they killed Xan even that wasn't true any more. She had to get away from them, to make a clean start.

But why did she leave the people who would be real friends behind?

Maybe it was that other "Xan." He was as different a person as possible, but he looked just like him. She almost couldn't stand to look at him, at least then. On top of that was her other self. She saw in that other blonde girls eyes something she thought only existed in her other 'friends.' It scared her. She simply had to get away from them, as she had to get away from everyone else.

Her blonde hair had grown out and she had finally cut all the black-dyed chunks off the ends as it grew. She thought she could make herself into another person, but everything still seemed to be going wrong.

At first she thought her captors were after her for stealing the food. That was until they put something over her mouth. Police didn't do that sort of thing, they simply locked your wrists in handcuffs and took you to the station. She woke up some time later in the company of several non-descript white men in suits. They looked at her with disdain, like she was a thing instead of a person. They locked her away in a cell that was more of a box than a room. They didn't even provide for the most basic of comforts. Animals in zoos were better kept than her.

Then, amazingly, another man in black was there. He was tall, like her Xan had been, but much heavier, much stronger. Despite his bulk he moved silently and fluidly. In moments her bindings were off and he was carrying her down the sterile white concrete hallways that made her latest prison. He carried her into the night air outside, the sounds of the marsh animals masking their escape. He gently placed her in some kind of SUV and without a word he sped back to the main road.

His voice was calm, reassuring. He had a very slight southern accent. He told her that he was taking her someplace that she would be safe, away from the "Special Unit" as he called her captors. He turned her over to people he called Global Justice, saying that they would take care of her and that they had her best interests at heart.

Ava tried her door again, still finding it locked. These people might act kind and merciful, but she still felt like she was a prisoner.

* * *

Kim Possible and related characters are the property of Disney. Ava and Xan are property of 20th Century Fox. This work of fiction is my property. 


	4. Bueno Nacho for Six

_**Soulmates of the Fury**_

* * *

**Bueno Nacho for Six**

* * *

Neil moved about his home like a silent shadow. The moon was high in the sky, casting a faint silver light on everything. He peaked into the open door of his newest guest's room. The two were sound asleep, Kim's arm draped across Ron. He knew the couple were discovering something about a vacation – at the end of the day you were just as exhausted as a hard day of work. They had fallen asleep on the couch again as the four of them engaged in conversation after dinner. This time, however, he was there to wake them and chase them into a proper bed. He wasn't even sure Ron had even awakened, simply sleepwalking into the darkened room he kept cool with the powerful central air system. He cringed as the wooden floor creaked under his two-hundred thirty pounds, something even his practiced stealth couldn't control. He needn't have worried, the two didn't stir.

He discovered something surprising that evening. If the two young women had not been mortal enemies they might have been best friends. They were actually so much alike. Strong, willful, independent. They both had a pair of twin younger brothers. Both had spent their teen years fighting evil. He watched as the two of them talked, perhaps for the first time ever. Sure, there was the verbal sparring that took the place of physical combat, but there was something else there. A single question formed in his mind, directed at Shego; "What are you, her sister?"

He could also detect a combination of respect and jealousy coming from both of them.

Shego's door had been left open as well. She still guarded her privacy rather closely, but had taken to leaving it open recently. He stood there a moment, watching her sleep. It wasn't an invitation or anything like that, he thought it may be her way of casting off the bonds that had formed in her mind. When asked about it, she simply said it kept the room more comfortable in the summer months. He knew not to pry any further.

So beautiful. So much of her waking life she had her face screwed up in rage and bitterness, or hiding those feelings with an evil glare. Asleep all of that melted away, allowing him to see her as she once was.

He knew he loved her enough to help her get back there if she wanted to.

He wanted to touch her hair, perhaps to lightly kiss her cheek but that wasn't his place. Also, she was a light sleeper and might mistake his affection, for good or bad. Sadly, he silently turned on his heels and went into his room, closing the door. He touched a key on his open laptop and scanned his email messages. Chat room buddies were wondering where he had gotten to, but he didn't feel like sitting there, typing conversations into the night. Instead he shut the computer and let himself out onto his private section of the screened deck through a door in the back of his room.

He had walled up the section of porch some months ago. There was no furniture at all, the only furnishing a single tatami mat. He sat down there and cleared his mind, the feeling of power within him washing over him. The outside world, the moonlight, the quiet breeze, the chirp of night-time insects all faded away until he was again in the silent place he sometimes went to. Sometimes he went there for peace, sometimes for answers. The first time he came here he was ripped from reality, the power blazing and new inside him. Two other figures had stood with him that time, though he did not know who they were. He still didn't. They had not returned in all the many months he had been doing this. He was alone in a large grassy field. Wind whipped around him, but did not stir him.

Something new caught his attention in the dream-place. A sword appeared before him, bathed in blue/violet fire so bright he almost had to shield his spirit eyes. The golden hilt was gently arched, the tips turning sharply toward the long, slender blade. The grip was wrapped in soft, dark leather, tied expertly near the elongated octagon shape of the pommel. It slowly descended to the ground some ten feet in front of him, the tip penetrating the dreamscape earth several inches.

He remembered the sword. It had been called into existence by a woman who turned out to be another universe's version of Shego. It was a relic of an ancient religion of sorts in that world, the weapon of an avatar of the collective ascended beings known as the Effurien.

She had called it _The Sword of the Fury_.

Somehow, in this universe, Neil was somehow tied to that power as well.

Something in the back of his mind told him this was not truly the sword. It was not his place to take it. This was a sign, a guidepost that he had been looking for, a clue about his destiny.

The sword slowly changed form, into that of a finely crafted, ancient Japanese katana.

As he reached for the sword it blinked out of existence.

"Who are you?" a blonde-haired girl asked him. One moment he had been alone, the next she was standing off to the side.

"Wha?" was all he could gasp before his dream-place winked out of existence, replaced with the darkened porch of his beach house.

* * *

"Bueno Nacho?" The dirty-dishwater blonde said disdainfully, looking at the plasticine menu above the counter.

"All we can afford here." The tall young man with long brown hair answered.

"Isn't this, like, the junk food of the fast food industry?" She asked, not caring if the orange clad teenager at the counter heard her. "and what the hell is a Naco?"

"Just order something, Maria."

"Cool your jets, Space-boy. I'm still thinking."

Seeing her hesitation the couple behind them stepped up to the register. The young man looked like he could be anywhere from eighteen to thirty. He was just as tall as the man with Maria, but his dark hair was cut short in what could be referred to as a generic five dollar haircut. The style didn't help his ears, which stood a little further out from his head than most. The girl with him, despite being almost the same age, was quite the opposite. She was the shortest of the group and quite petite, her long brown hair gathered up in a loose ponytail. "We'll have two Chimiritos, a Naco Salad and a large diet cola." He turned to Maria and her companion. "What are you two having, Michael, we're buying this time."

"Same thing, Maxwell. With extra hot Diablo sauce."

"What did Isabel and Kyle want?" The shorter girl asked in a slightly husky voice.

"Just make it three full orders like the first." Max said to the teen behind the counter.

"That's thirteen ninety two." He said, pushing his glasses back up on his nose.

The quartet carried their tray to a booth table, where the other two waited for them. The food was handed out, the women naturally taking the salads. The young woman at the table was taller and somewhat more voluptuous than the other two, despite being only slightly older. Kyle was the shortest of the three teens, but more broadly built, having once been a high school football player. Max, Michael and Isabel took the lion's share of the Diablo sauce packets, spreading the contents liberally on their food. They each took a bite, looked at the food again, and produced small bottles of Tabasco sauce which they liberally doused on their fare.

"Tell me again why we're in this burg?" Michael asked their apparent leader.

"Liz found a mention online of a real space ship landing here last summer. There is a Space Center here, so I thought we should at least check it out."

"That sounds risky. It also sounds like the 'Special Unit' setting up another trap for us." Michael said between bites of his Chimirito.

"I agree with Michael." Isabel said. "The last ship we found led to you and Liz getting arrested and later your costing us any real help from Langley."

"I don't think so." Max said in his always serious sounding voice. "For one thing, this all happened out in the open and involved some kind of crime-fighting team that's based here in Middleton."

"Oh, so now we're following fantasy stories about supposed teen-aged heroes?" Michael complained with his usual intensity.

"Teenagers roaming the world, helping people when they can. Sound familiar, anyone?" Kyle finally broke in.

"We're just going to take a look. We don't even know if it's still here. For all we know it just picked the group up and moved on." Max said.

"So we're just going to waltz up to this 'Space-Center' and ask 'Do you have any interstellar starships parked here with your rockets? Cool, can we see it, maybe take it for a spin to Antar?" he was having a hard time keeping the sarcasm out of his voice.

"Something like that. They have a visitor center, that can't be any worse than what they usually hear from the tourists."

"Unbelievable, Maxwell. What about this town being the world headquarters for Global Justice?"

"We won't be breaking any laws. Besides, they have their hands full fighting real bad guys. I don't think they would have time for us. We're fortunate the Special Unit can't operate in the open, that limits their resources…" He stopped as he realized Liz was staring off into space, her salad forgotten. "Liz?"

She blinked twice, as if she was having trouble remembering where she was. "I…I think I just got a flash." She sometimes had the ability to see flashes about people close to her. "What I don't understand is it looked like…Tess…was in some kind of danger!" She almost spat the name.

"Tess?" the rest of them said in unison.

"I thought you said she died in that blast at the Air Force base." Michael whispered urgently.

"She did, but the more I think about, yes, I'm sure it was her I got a flash about. She's in some kind of…swamp, I guess, and she's in danger.

Something clicked behind Max's eyes "Ava!" he proclaimed, getting up from the table.

* * *

Shego stirred her coffee, wishing the caffeine would work its way into her system faster. She slept fitfully once the snoring started. Even getting up to close her door hadn't been enough to drown it out. She was used to Neil's quiet log sawing – but this was beyond that. It literally rattle the walls. Some time around 3 in the morning she stomped into the adjoining bedroom, about to bestow Ron with a new name – Snorable!

Her jaw about hit the floor when she realized it was Kim making all the noise.

She ended up back in her own room, holding her sides, trying not to laugh out loud. That was just too much! How she was managing not to wake Stoppable, she had no clue.

None of the mirth helped her get back to sleep.

The attempts at "girl-talk" and holding back her true desire to smack the smug little princess right off the island were starting to get to her. Patience. She had to have patience. At least until Neil could find a way to make her change permanent. Oh, to have her powers _and_ to look like a normal person! Once that happened she'd disappear for good!

Why did that thought fill her with a vague feeling of sadness and guilt?

She put that off to lack of sleep. Maybe she'd catch forty winks once the kids were up and off to the beach or something. That'd be great, she thought. _The Lady Chablis _was doing a show tonight in Savannah and she tried to catch her every time she was there the last months. Now that was true _bitchiness_! She smiled, dozing lightly at the kitchen table.

Her eyes snapped open. Something was wrong. She didn't need her powers to access her battle-honed senses. Three things jumped into her mind: Man. Rifle. Silencer.

She was fully awake in an instant, reflexes taking over, saving her life. The bullet emerged from the M4 with a slight 'phut' as she shot backwards from the table. Her legs swung upwards as she back flipped away. There was a loud crash as another black-clad attacker smashed through the kitchen door wielding a strange, boxy looking weapon, also decked out with a large silencer. She spun in mid-flip, sending her bare foot into the man's midsection.

They had found her! And this time they were actually aiming to kill her!

Any pretense of who and what she was went out the window with the blast of green plasma that fried the assault rifle in the first attackers hands. She felt the power surge in her and she didn't need to look at herself to know that she had changed back to her old green self.

Better green than dead!

The man who had smashed down the kitchen door recovered and was leveling his P90 at her. She jumped to one side, springing off the refrigerator before crashing into his chin with her heel. He went down as if he had been shot himself. Dimly, she was aware that more men in black SWAT gear were ready to charge in, blocking any escape that way. She took the only way out she had.

"She's one of them!" She head the nearest shout as she blasted through the interior door into the living room.

More of them were already there waiting for her. She hurled a bolt at his head, knocking the black helmet and visor clean off of him. She sprang from the floor, grabbing the open rafters to swing above the other three men.

A blur of orange hair and pink pajamas joined the fray, along with a black-clad body being thrown from the couple's bedroom. He crashed into another of the attackers. Ron was close behind, his arms and legs flailing in some strange combat pose.

Shego dropped, side-kicking the nearest strike team member. In the same motion she round housed with her flaming fists, causing the man to try and block using his weapon. Her plasma-engulfed hand passed through it like it wasn't there, rendering it inoperable.

There was a shout from outside "We've got him, let's go." The remaining attackers suddenly withdrew, dragging their unconscious companions with them.

Got him? A knot suddenly formed in the pit of her stomach as she rushed for the one door still closed. She nearly ripped it off its hinges as she looked inside.

The room was empty. The door leading to the patio was splintered in two. Beyond she could see the where the screen had been ripped away, leading into the darkness of the early morning.

She screamed, her hands flaring until they were nearly white hot "NEAL!"


	5. I Fought the Law and

_**Soulmates of the Fury**_

* * *

**Chapter 5: I Fought the Law and...**

* * *

Three men in non-descript suits studied a series of security recordings. The suits were muted colors, the sort that would not look out of place on mid-level managers in a bank building. They were neat, precise, while not being flashy by any means. None of these men wore a black suit though they could quite easily be referred to as "Men in Black." 

The one closest to the screen spoke first. "How is it our men come into contact with a subject with these kind of abilities and they do nothing?" he was obviously angry.

"In the confusion of the fight, once they completed their objective, they withdrew. The team leader didn't know about the female until later." The second man said.

"Sloppy. Inexcusable." The angry man muttered.

The third man reached past the other two and restarted the recording. They watched again as video recorded by helmet mounted cameras showed the pale woman suddenly turned light green and started hurling bolts of green energy at the men. The image switched to another angle, this time showing her fighting side by side with a younger couple. The video once again reached its conclusion as the strike team withdrew.

"What about surveillance?" The second man asked.

The first man touched a control, showing the battle once more, this time from a camera hidden in the rafters of the beach house.

The third man finally spoke. "I know who this woman is. She's not an alien at all, she's a human-mutate. She goes by the name of Shego and she's a criminal mercenary, most often associated with Drew Lipsky, also known as Doctor Drakken." He stopped and touched a few controls on his PDA. "She also goes by the name of Sheila Ogehs, an alias she uses from time to time in parts of Europe. Her real name is Sherry Godfrey. She used to be part of a group of Meta-humans called Team Go, until she struck out on her own as muscle for hire."

"Then what does she have to do with our prisoner?"

"I don't know. I thought at first he was somehow related to our targets, but all the tests Doctor Oray…" he gestured at the second man "…ran showed he is just a baseline human."

"A baseline human who managed to break a trained soldiers leg and otherwise incapacitate three other men before we doped him." Oray replied. "It took almost three times the normal dosage to bring him down this time, and it looks like it is already wearing off."

"So what _do_ we know about him?" The first man asked.

FBI Special Agent Starler checked his PDA once more. "James Neil Argus. Age twenty-four. Born in Charlotte, North Carolina, current residence Tybee Island Georgia. Owns a small time bike shop there. Lived most of his life in Charlotte except during high school when he moved to Chicago. Returned to North Carolina after a crippling sports injury…"

"There is no evidence of that injury." Oray said flatly.

"That much is evident and another question for which we don't yet have answers." Starler responded. "Nothing in his jacket even hints that he has these kind of abilities."

"If he was in contact with Max Evans, that would explain the healed injury. Our sources say that he has the power of psychokinetic healing, among his other abilities." The first man suggested.

"I've considered that, but so far I can't find any indication that this guy has ever been in contact with our targets." Starler said.

"I don't know. Something about this kid's record is just too…neat. I think he's been cleaned up by somebody, somebody professional. What I don't get, though, if he's working for another agency, what was he doing here and what is he doing with a known criminal." The first man, Special Agent Tybor, wondered.

"Another proper question that requires and answer." Starler said. "In the mean time, I think we might be able to use this criminal to our advantage. Tybor, I want you to call Special Agent Reth. Tell her to have our plane ready, I think we may be able to put our rivals at Global Justice off of our trail for a bit. Tell her we will be flying to Colorado." He turned to Oray. "Doctor, I think you have a patient to attend to."

"Yes sir." The doctor said, then left without another word.

* * *

Kim and Ron finally managed to calm Shego down. A hysterical meta-human with the power to hurl destructive bursts of plasma was a downright frightening thing. Needless to say, it was by then quite hard to tell what had been damaged by their attackers and what she had destroyed herself. 

"I just want to know how they found me!" She raged, small bits of green fire playing up and down her bare arms as if it no longer wished to be contained just at her fists. "And why they took Neil!"

"What if they were really after him?" Ron asked, hoping to divert her attention.

"Look, _Stompable_, they were trying to _KILL_ me!" She grabbed his shoulders, fortunately without scorching him with her barely contained power."

"Shego, if they wanted you dead, they'd have stayed to finish the job. You were just collateral damage in their eyes." Kim explained.

"How so?"

"They pulled out of here the moment they grabbed him. Somebody else made the call. That's how the three of us got out with our skins intact, for the moment."

"But why would they grab Neil?" Tears were now streaming down her mint colored features

"Oh, I don't know, why would somebody want to grab a former GJ agent who happens to have his own space-yacht who also might be some sort of celestial avatar. Who also happens to live under the same roof with a known criminal. So not the target." She finished, with a touch of sarcasm.

"Neil still has the spaceship?" Shego and Ron chorused.

"Safely hidden away." Kim replied. "Now, we've got to get out of this place."

"Why, I thought they got what they came for?" Ron asked.

"They did, but before too long they're going to figure our who else was here and they just might come looking for us. Gear up, people, we're motorin'!"

Moments later Kim and Ron were ready to go in their standard mission gear. They looked at Shego with puzzled eyes.

"What happened to your uniform?" Kim asked.

Shego was wearing black jeans and a black long sleeved mock turtleneck. Unlike Kim's, it wasn't bare at the midriff. She added black leather gloves and sunglasses, despite the fact the sun wasn't quite fully up yet. "I don't have one with me. Look, I was hoping to for once in my life at least look normal. The less stuff I had around that reminded me of that, the better, Okay? Can we just go?"

They piled out of the house, into the sandy sparse front lawn. Neil's green Ford Explorer was still parked there, with the PT Cruiser off to the side.

"We'll take my car." Kim said as the other two tried to make up their minds.

"What, is it full of your little tech guy's surprises?" Shego asked as she climbed into the back seat along with their hastily packed day bags. "Sheesh, this car just _screams_ Kimmie!"

"No, it gets better mileage." She flicked her red hair almost disdainfully at the big-tired SUV. She finally climbed in and pulled out her keys.

"Hold up, KP." Ron said, holding up his left hand, his Kimmunicator in the other. He pressed the send button and waited a moment for the link to be re-established. Quicker than he expected, Wade's rounded features popped up on the screen. Before he could say a word, Ron said "Orkin!"

Blue light glowed from the back of the device. Slowly he passed the beam around the whole vehicle. Finally the unit chimed and he looked at Wade again.

"Good call, Ron. I've isolated three separate tracking devices and one listening device in the car. I'm substituting my own signal now until I can trace the receivers. What's going on?"

Kim punched up her own Kimmunicator. "Wade, have you got a fix on our position?"

"Yeah, and…KIM, LOOK OUT BEHIND YOU!"

"What?" She turned suddenly, only to see Shego's perpetually ticked off face staring back at her quizzically.

"Shego's right there, about three feet away from you!"

"Oh good grief!" Shego said.

"Wade, she's cool, for the moment." Kim said with hooded eyes.

"I'm not gonna ask, especially since they've got an all-points bulletin up about you at GJ."

"WHAT?"

"They've gotten a hold of some security tapes showing you working with Shego. I thought it was some kind of hoax, but now…I don't get it."

"It's a long story, Wade. Listen, we've got to get far away from here really quick. Can you line something up for us?"

"I'll see what I can do. With the alert, I don't think I'll be able to use the usually channels. For the moment, your car should be safe to drive. I'll get back with you as soon as I can. Oh, and Kim…"

"Yes, Wade?"

"I know you know what you're doing. Just be careful."

"Thank you, Wade. You rock." She said, as the screen winked off. She put her keys in the ignition and pulled out into the road.

There was only one way off the island and she prayed it wasn't being watched.

* * *

Doctor James Timothy Possible rubbed the bridge of his nose before turning his attention back to the diagram on his oversized PDA. Some of the things he was seeing there just didn't make sense. How could a magnetic field collect enough free ions to generate that much thrust without making itself into the biggest drag chute in the universe? All rocket scientists knew that a Broussard collector would act as if it were running into a more and more solid wall of particles as it approached relativistic speeds. 

Yet, the engine diagram he was studying was supposed to do precisely that, and more! It was just a matter of figuring out exactly how it worked.

It helped that he knew first hand that it actually did work. It was just necessary, in his mind, that they understood how it worked before they started just plain copying the one they did have access too. If something went wrong with a copy or it just simply didn't work they would need to know why.

It was hard trying to unravel five hundred years of advances in just one.

Finally he realized it was getting close to six. He was supposed to get off at five and head home. Home had seemed strangely empty for the past week without Ronald and Kim there for at least part of the day. He thought for the fifteenth time that day about emailing his proto-son-in-law with (jokingly) dire warnings about keeping his promise. No, he told himself once more, he both loved and trusted him. The kids had earned that trust and deserved their time away. Time away to be eighteen year old kids and nothing more.

It was just that eighteen year old kids have eighteen year old hormones. It's a simple fact of nature.

Quit that! He told himself. For one thing it was hard enough to think of his Kimmie-cub as a legal adult. For another, he knew she was smart enough to rise above such things. Wasn't she?

His thoughts were interrupted when a pair of strangers entered his lab. At first he was concerned when the man and woman approached, but security would not have let them this deep into the center without proper authorization. Both of them had dark hair and wore nice, but not overly expensive business suits. The man spoke first, showing a wallet ID.

"Doctor Possible, I am FBI Special Agent Jahan Starler. My associate is Special Agent Yasmine Reth."

"Yes, Agents, what can I do for you?" He blanked the screen on his work pad and put it down.

"Doctor, when did you last see your daughter, Kimberly Possible?"

Huh? What is this about? "She has been out of town for just over five days now. She is on vacation with her boyfriend."

"I see. What is her relationship with the mercenary known as Shego?"

"Shego is my daughters mortal enemy. They've fought on numerous occasions." He saw no other way to put it. Kimmie-cub was a public figure and any FBI agent worth his or her salt should know about Kim and Shego.

"The why is it, you think, that she would aid and abet this Shego during an attempt to apprehend her?"

"What? I think you must be mistaken. There is no way my daughter would help Shego. She was the one who put her away a couple years ago after the Diablo fiasco!"

"Take a look at this, Doctor Possible." He held up his PDA, playing the helmet-cam video. It clearly showed Kim, dressed in pajamas, fighting alongside a similarly clad green woman."

"That…that has to be some trick. I just can't believe it."

"It's no trick, Doctor. That is a highly trained strike team attempting to apprehend a known criminal. We're speaking of duly authorized agents exercising their duty." He turned, as if to leave. "If you hear from her, Doctor, I want you to call us immediately." He turned back to Doctor Possible, handing him a card. "It would go better for her if you did. I'm sure she has her reasons. We're only after the real criminal here, but until we sort all of this out, we have to find your child." He then turned and strode out the door, Agent Reth close behind.

His mind was awhirl. Why would Kim help Shego? None of that made sense. It was one thing when she had cajoled the green woman into helping her brothers regain their powers from Aviarius, but to actually fight officers of the law trying to arrest her? No! That just didn't compute!

* * *

A navy blue sedan pulled up to an abandoned looking building not far from the now-defunct Naval station in Charleston South Carolina. The man, a middle aged gentleman with salt and pepper hair and a neat Vandyke closed the door and shrugged into a white lab-coat. He pulled a clip-on ID out of his pocket and attached it to an embroidered hole made just for that purpose. Without missing a step he strode up to a set of large cargo doors and waited. Hidden lasers sprang forth, sending their faint red beams to read the code printed on the ID card. A door opened beside the main one where they had only been plain, unbroken wall before. He stepped inside where a heavily muscled man in a dark blue jumpsuit waited to visually check the identification, despite the report of the automatic scanners. 

"Doctor Arthur Oray, Global Justice Medical." He said. "I'm here to see the patient they brought in the night before."

"Right this way, Doctor. They are waiting for you."

"Thank you." He said, turning down the white corridor the guard indicated. A wry smile spread across his neat features as he walked.

* * *

Neil strained against the chains binding him to the floor of the cell. He remembered coming to in some sort of vehicle. The last thing he remembered was climbing into his bed about three in the morning after checking on his guests. The next thing he knew he was in a van of some sort, his hands bound with what felt like a zip tie. Duct tape or some similar material covered his mouth. What had happened to him? 

Then he realized where he was. He was back in the same hidden facility where the FBI Special Unit had that young girl, Ava captive.

Training took over. He took down at least four of them when something stung his neck. His vision blurred for a moment as his balance wavered. Fighting the feeling off, he dropped back into his fighting stance.

There was another sting, this time in his chest. He looked down, seeing the feathered end of a tranquilizer dart. This time the fuzzy vision didn't fade. He could barely remain erect. Still, he only had one chance to get out of this alive.

A third sting, again in his broad chest, and everything faded away.

He didn't know how long he was out that time, but they were not taking any chances. He was now bound by heavy chains, the type used on trucks to drag things like logs. They had welded one end of the heavy chain to a full set of hand and foot shackles. The other end was attached to the floor. There wasn't enough slack in the chain for him to stand completely upright.

A man in a tan suit stepped into his cell. "So, I see Doctor Oray was correct. You are awake already."

"What the hell are you doing with me?" Neil growled, tugging again at the unyielding chain.

"My, aren't we the caged animal? My name is Tybor, and I work for the FBI, but I think you know that. I think you know the kind of trouble you are in. Stealing government property. Resisting arrest."

"I don't know what you're talking about." Neil snarled.

"Yes you do." He displayed a large PDA, a security video playing on it. The image was computer enhanced, to bring out the detail, but it was clearly a shot of Neil using a low-yield laser of some sort to cut the bonds of the blonde girl they had previously held captive."

"She is a human being, you have no right…"

"I'm afraid you're sadly mistaken, Mr. Argus. She is _not_ a human being. Not in the least. Since she's not a human, she doesn't have any _human_ rights. She is the property of the United States Government."

"You're full of…She's just a girl! What do you mean she's not human. If she's a clone, she has every right the same as any other human being. The courts have said so!"

"Don't play coy with me. You know she's part of a conspiracy by aliens to infiltrate the United States. She's part of the vanguard of an invasion force. Now, James, where is Max Evans, Michael Guerin, Elizabeth Parker and Isabel Evans?"

"First thing, my name is Neil. I don't answer to James. Secondly, I don't know who the hell you're talking about."

"You have to know where they are. Who else would send you to rescue their kinswoman?"

"You are certifiably out of your mind, dude. Read my lips; I've never heard of these people."

Tybor backhanded Neil with such force he would have slid into the wall if not arrested by the binding chains. He got back up on his feet, stooping at the limit of the slack. He didn't say anything, just glared at his captor.

"Doesn't matter. Doctor Oray will be back soon enough. Vee have vays of making you talk!' He sneered in a fake accent, laughing as if that were the funniest thing in the universe as he left the cell.

Neil's glare should have been able to cut through the metal door.

* * *

"What do you think?" Special Agent Reth asked her companion as they left the office section. There was a small crowd of tourists in the visitor center. Closing time was approaching and the last stragglers were finally making their way toward the exits. 

"I think we rattled him a bit, but I have a feeling he's way more accustomed to weird things happening involving his daughter. I wouldn't get your hopes up about him calling us." He said with an air of confidence. It didn't matter if Doctor Possible called them, this was only one piece of a bigger puzzle.

"I'm willing to bet he's on the phone with Global Justice as we speak." Reth commented.

"Probably. Just as well, they're going to be pulling out the stops to bring the girl in. I'm sure they don't believe anything about the reports but they have to follow up on in none-the-less."

Starler stopped short was a tall teenager almost bumped into him. The boy offered an "excuse me" and quickly shuffled away, his head lowered as if trying to hide his true height. A much shorter girl followed close behind.

As soon as the boy passed, Starler grabbed Reth's arm and pulled her around the corner, producing a cell-phone from his pocket. He pressed a button, connecting directly to another similar phone in the possession of a nearby ready-team.

"Code Bravo, Code Bravo. Seal off the Middleton Space Center immediately. Subjects Max Evans and Elizabeth Parker are in the building. I repeat, seal the building. Nobody is to get out until I say so!"

* * *

_For those who don't know - the sextet of characters I introduced in the last chapter are from 20th Century Fox's TV show "Roswell" In brief, Max, Michael and Isabel are human-alien hybrids, infused with the essenses of the royal family of the planet Antar. Despite this, they have been raised as humans. Liz, Max's new wife, is human, though she has taken on some alien powers after Max brought her back from the dead several years earlier. Maria is Michael's girlfriend. Kyle is the son of the former Sheriff of Roswell and was himself healed by Max and is Liz's former boyfriend. Hope this helps for the folks unfamiliar with the show (I've got all 3 seasons on DVD - great stuff!)_


	6. Oooo That Smell, Can't You Smell That Sm

_**Soulmates of the Fury**_

* * *

**Chapter 6. Oooo That Smell, Can't You Smell That Smell**

* * *

A slightly built woman sat alone at the top of the tower, her legs dangling off the edge. She looked out over the water at the city, wondering about the normal lives being led there. The moon was high in the sky, casting it's reflection on the lake, silhouetting her form. She was singing softly, tonelessly, half remembering the lyrics of the song.

"Sixteen candles down the drain…" She kicked slightly as she sang, her voice wandering between melancholy and mirth.

"You know that's song's about a redhead, not a brunette." The voice drifted up from the gravel covered rooftop. A head covered in unruly brown hair popped up at the top of the ladder, its owner clambering over the ledge to sit with the young woman.

"Hey, you!" She leaned over toward him and kissed him they way young people did when they greeted a loved one. "I'm not going to ask you how you got in here."

He slid a little closer to her, his rump touching hers. "Maybe I'm developing my own powers and the security system decided it was time to let me in on my own."

"Bull crap, Neil. The authorities hauled off the remains of the meteor long before you got here. Fortunately you're just a plain old human. Now how did you get in here?"

"Who says I got in. Last time I looked, we were on the roof of the Go Tower. I just hopped a tourist helicopter and parachuted in right behind you. Anything for my 'Sweet Sixteen!'" he produced a small wrapped package. The card was marked "To Sherry, Love, Neil."

She kissed him again, then locked eyes with him. "If you'd pulled a stunt like that all sorts of alarms would have gone off and you'd have Hego making a human pretzel out of you again."

"Heh. He's just being protective of his little sister."

"No, Neil, he doesn't like you. Maybe if you got a haircut you'd hear some of these things through all that mop on your head. He doesn't trust GJ, he doesn't trust their liaison and he just plain doesn't like you." Sherry said, pushing a lock of her shoulder length black hair out of her eyes.

"He'll come around, eventually. Now are you going to open that or are we going to just make out until he wanders up here and tried to tie me in knots?"

"Neither, until you tell me how you got in here?" She grinned at him.

"Okay, smartass. One of the twins let me in. Satisfied?" Indeed she was. Her oldest brother barely tolerated Neil but the twins seemed to worship the ground he walked on. They saw the tall, skinny Southerner as a sort of surrogate older brother. In fact, he spent almost as much time with them as he did Sherry. Hego hated him. Mego tolerated him. Both Wegos adored him.

Sherry, who more and more went by her code name Shego, loved him.

"Okay, I fessed up, now make with the ripping and tearing." He pointed at the small box again.

"This better not be what I think it is." She mock leered at him.

"What, me? Let's see, two months salary of zero is, um, zero, so I don't think_ that_ is in the cards…yet."

She stuck her tongue out at him and started peeling the wrapping off the box. Inside, sitting on soft white pillows of cotton was a large ovoid piece of perfectly green jade. It was very slightly darker green than her Team Go uniform.

"It's beautiful, Neil!"

"Here, it's made for your collar." He affixed it to the green layer, centered on her throat. "Happy birthday… Shego."

She put an arm around him and put her head on his shoulder. "Now you're going to rub it in that I couldn't see you on your sixteenth birthday last month!"

"Nah, saving Go City from Aviarius takes precedence over the man you've expressed your undying devotion to."

"Okay, now who's bein' a smart-ass?"

* * *

"Okay, we're here why?" Ron was doing his best not to show his disdain for the shabby warehouse Shego led them to. He wasn't doing a very good job.

Using the extra strength that came with the active use of her power, Shego shoved a large crate out of the way, revealing a smaller roll-up door. That in turn led to the outside storage yard. The warehouse itself might have been in disuse, but the yard was almost full of shipping containers, stacked over ten high in some places. The sun was dipping as afternoon slipped into evening. She led the trio along the wall, heading for an obviously more dilapidated stack of containers.

"C'mere and give me a boost, Slappable."

"My name, for the last time, is Stoppable!" he glared at her, his index finger outthrust.

"Would you rather I just called you Buffoon?"

He continued to glare at her, but interlocked his fingers and stooped so she could plant a foot there. He lifted quite a bit harder than she needed to reach the second level of containers but she simply executed a double flip in the air, landing perfectly on the ledge created by having a smaller container atop a larger one.

Kim followed second, alighting beside Shego.

"Um, ladies? What about me?"

Kim and Shego looked at each other, then leaned over the side to grab Ron by his shoulders and haul him up.

The container was secured with a large padlock. Instead of producing a key, Shego simply opened the side of the lock and tapped a code into the pad revealed inside. The hasp opened with a faint snap. She pulled the release and the door swung open silently. Apparently it had been treated so it wouldn't squeak like so many other steel containers.

"Oh, _gross_!" the three of them said in unison as a wave of sun-heated effluvia wafted out of the storage unit.

"What crawled in here and died?" Kim said, not willing to take her hand off her face.

"There shouldn't be anything in here dead." Shego said, also holding her nose. "Oh, man, that's just…ug!" She peered around, her eyes finally coming to rest on what must have once been a bag of some kind. "Oh crap."

"Not crap, definitely much worse than crap!" Ron exclaimed.

Shego's hands flared to life. Instead of throwing a ball of energy she focused it into a stream of green plasma. She got behind the offending bag and blasted it out into the dim twilight. It landed on the ground below with a resounding wet slap.

"Ohhh, I and didn't think it could get worse!" Kim was suddenly quite happy they hadn't had anything to eat besides the bag of _Bueno Nacho Naco To Go_ that was in the Cruiser.

"You'd think it was too early for flaming bags of poo! I thought that was for Halloween?" Ron complained. His cheeks bulged out as he held his own stomach contents barely in check.

Shego kept her blasting up, burning away the remnants of the bag. Satisfied, she disappeared into the darkness of the container, returning with a large spray can. She sprayed the whole area with the disinfectant, which helped tremendously with the odor. "Sorry, guys, guess I left a bag of burritos when I locked up the last time."

"Tell me that wasn't Bueno Nacho. For the love of all that's holy, please tell me that's not what happens to an uneaten Chimirito?" Ron begged.

"Amp down there, Snackable. It was probably from Chihuahua Taco. They're more popular here than your usual dump."

"It's going to be a long time before I can set foot in any kind of Tex-Mex restaurant." Kim said, still feeling as green as Shego looked. "So, what are we doing here?"

Shego pulled the door shut, trapping the oppressive heat inside once more. She touched a hidden switch and a series of fluorescent lights sprang to life in hidden cornices. Somewhere, concealed ductwork started bringing cool air into the space.

There wasn't much room inside a forty foot long container, but it did provide the space for a cot and a trunk. It wasn't much, but it was clear this was a hideout of some sort.

"So much for trusting Neil, I see." Kim said flatly.

"Do you think I'm stupid, Princess? I show up on his doorstep after almost six years and I'm supposed to blindly trust him? What if he up and decided to turn me over to GJ instead of helping me? Was he supposed to up and forgive me for crippling him?"

"Crippling? The limp he used to have?"

"Yeah, I did that. I put him in the hospital. I had a choice of killing him or taking him out of the fight and I guess I was soft. He spent months in the hospital and over a year just being able to walk unassisted. It tore me up inside seeing him like that and not being able to go to him and ask for forgiveness. Then when you brought him with you to capture Drakken and me, I…" She stopped, a look of hopelessness crossing her features, erasing the smugness that was usually there.

"What is the deal with you two anyway?" Kim asked.

Shego sat heavily on the sparsely made bed. "I met him when GJ set him up in Go City High when we were both fourteen. That was before I became what I am now. Pretty soon we were going steady. I thought he was the love of my life. Then it happened."

"The meteorite?"

"Yeah. We had some stupid fight and he stormed out. I went to hide in our treehouse to have a good cry, but the twins were already there. One of them went to get Herman and Mervin came tagging along. So, there we were, the five of us just sitting there nice and pretty, ready to have our lives ruined."

"But, after we got out of the hospital and our powers started developing, Neil still stuck by me. We were together through thick and thin. He even stood up to Hego, even though they hated each other, almost as much as we hate each other." She cast her eyes on Kim before looking down again. "What I did…I should have been ashamed, but I wasn't. I reveled in what I'd done, it made me feel alive. More alive than anything else I had done since I became Shego. I finally understood what it was to have power and to use it."

"So, Neil and the remains of Team Go had to come after me. It was Neil that got the drop on me and he almost got me, except he made one little mistake that gave me the upper hand and I took full advantage of it. I made some calls while he was recovering but I never saw him again until last year."

Ron and Kim both stood there silently. Neither of them could ever recall seeing Shego openly weep.

* * *

Michael watched as another van full of armed FBI agents pulled up in front of the Space Center. His worry was rapidly turning to anger. "This is how we lay low?"

"Chill out, Space Boy. This might not have anything to do with Max and Liz." Maria pleaded. "There's something on the news about some local girl, some kind of celebrity who's in some big trouble. They mentioned something in the report about her Daddy working in there."

"It's Max. I can feel it." Michael said.

"So what are we going to do, just march up there and start blasting our way through all those armed men?" Isabel asked.

"If that's our last option." Michael replied.

"Guys, guys." Kyle stepped between them. "One thing, if they had Max or Liz they'd have brought one of them out by now. Two, Max isn't exactly mister helpless. If they had him cornered I think we'd have seen some fireworks by now."

"Maxwell doesn't exactly have the most firepower. His powers are mostly defensive."

"He can still kill."

"Michael, he won't do that. You know him."

"Well, I would. I have. If it's them or us, I pick us." He glowered at his girlfriend.

Inside the building, the young couple in question risked a peek out of their hiding place. Max could make out a trio of large men in suits conferring at the far end of the hallway. He couldn't tell if they were FBI or simply part of the government issued security force the center employed, but he could not risk it.

"What happened, Max." Liz was scared. No matter how many scrapes they had been in, when things spiraled out of control you could see it on her face. That didn't mean she lacked the courage to do anything, it simply meant she was unable to hide her emotions.

That made Max want to hold, her, to protect her from the world. He would die for her if it meant protecting her. She was a hero to him and he had cast aside his destiny as the rightful ruler of his world to have her by his side. His hand went automatically to his ring finger, twisting the tiny gold hoop there. It wasn't much as wedding rings went, but it stood for the bond they had finally made official. Liz was his wife now, his always and forever. She was the life he had chosen over another that had been placed before him.

He checked the hallway once more. "We're clear"

Hesitantly they stepped out. They were deep inside the main building now. Their intention was to find a back way out, something perhaps that opened onto the assorted launch pads. There among the parked rocket ships they hoped to find a way to escape.

Soft voices warned them of the approach of others. They ducked into the first door they could find.

The lab was large, its interior rounded, windows opening to a yard where several rockets in various states of assembly stood, some of them ready to be towed to the launching pad. All of them had a dull metallic look, as if paint were an unnecessary extravagance. The two looked wistfully at the assembled launch vehicles. Max had come here, hoping to find evidence of a real space ship, not just these clumsy rockets. His mind had an image of saucers, utilizing energies as yet unknown to this planet to traverse the stars. All he saw were a collection of vehicles barely able to reach orbit, let alone span the gulf between planets. Take for instance that odd looking one, with the elongated ovoid hull and the two engines in the back. They looked even too small for the poor thing to break orbit. True, it was much larger than the craft that first brought their maturation pods to Earth, but it looked, well, primitive. His hopes faded.

Any hope at all was dashed away as the door burst open, admitting the large, suited men. Max's hand went up, his mind willing his force screen into being, but it was too late. Two metal spikes plunged into his chest, shooting enough voltage to freeze every muscle in his body. He went down, his last sight that of Liz ducking out of site under the control console of the lab.

* * *

Neil kept his gaze fixed to the white coated man as he entered the cell. Two assistants flanked the man, followed by two guards wearing body armor, each carrying boxy P90 rifles. They kept their distance, knowing from before what their captive was capable of. He entertained no illusions what they would do if he threatened the so-called doctor.

"You are a very interesting subject, Mr. Argus." The man began. "We hit you with enough _methohexadrexine_ to drop five men. You should either be out like a light or stoned out of your gourd right now. But you know what, I'm willing to bet if we took a blood sample right now we wouldn't find anything in there except traces. Now, I wonder why that could be." He pulled Neil's right arm and turned it palm up. "Be a good boy and make a fist for me. I'm not shooting you up with anything else, I'm just taking some blood, like I was talking about."

Neil obeyed, more out of respect for the close-quarters weapons the guards had leveled on him than a desire to make the physician's job easier.

"Set him up." The doctor ordered his two aides. They obliged by taping sensor to his chest and some odd device attached to a ring. They withdrew once they finished. "Now, don't be pulling any of these wires off. If you do, we'll have to exercise more persuasive means of keeping them on you. Things like full restraints. I know the shackles aren't comfortable, but being strapped down to a table is somewhat worse, I promise you."

The doctor leaned close, inspecting the connections, then, surprisingly, whispered "You have progressed farther than I expected. Much farther. Now we shall see what else you are capable of, James Neil Argus."

They left him, electrodes dangling from his body and hand. Moments later the current started, causing his muscles to twitch. The power increased until he felt no more.


	7. Fallen

_**Soulmates of the Fury**_

* * *

**Chapter 7. Fallen**

* * *

The new guy was supposed to be good. That is at least what Starler had told Tybor. He was supposed to be a decorated soldier, an Air Force Combat Controller, fresh from duty in Iraq. He was tall, taller than anyone else in the squad and, unlike most of the former soldiers that made up the Special Unit's strike team, he almost never wiped that silly grin off his face. Between that stupid smile and his predilection for wearing freaking sunglasses everywhere, the man was demonstrating his best talents lie in ticking Special Agent Jacob Tybor off.

A smile didn't decorate the one-time sergeant at the moment.

"I can't believe they tolerated this kind of incompetence in the Air Force, Bedarest!" Tybor seethed at the taller man.

"Sir, we were tracking an individual who have made it her life's work to avoid capture. She is just proving more elusive than we first expected."

"Elusive? Jones' Bones Bedarest! All you had to do was follow that car once it entered the city."

"I don't have an answer for you, sir. It entered the parking deck and disappeared. We've searched that deck three times and posted guards on each exit. It's like the car just vanished into thin air." Bedarest spoke as if simply stating a fact. There was no hint of pleading in his voice.

"Sergeant, what did you wear in Iraq?"

"Sir, the majority of the time I wore clothing cobbled together from local sources. When I was on base I wore standard issue three colored desert DCUs."

"And…what was the point of that _special _clothing?"

"Camouflage. To blend in."

"Precisely."

"I don't see your point, Sir. A maroon two thousand six Chrysler PT Cruiser with a wing-spoiler may not be unique, but there are not so many of them on the road. It is a pretty distinctive car."

"A car belonging to a girl with access to cutting edge technology. A car that can do this…" he pointed at the monitor on his desk.

The footage didn't have any sound, but it was obviously a party being held for a red-headed young woman. There was a shot of her being presented with the car, huge pink bow on top and everything. Then the footage changed. She was inside the car, talking animatedly into some kind of video cell phone. As she spoke, the exterior of the car shifted slightly, the maroon paint swirling, the color finally settling on forest green. Moments later a tiny hatch opened at the rear and a wing unfolded.

He realized then he had seen a silver PT Cruiser leaving the parking deck as his team approached. There was a momentary flash of anger in his eyes. "She would not have gotten away if we had been properly briefed. I was unaware their vehicle had these kind of capabilities."

"Maybe you weren't paying attention when you were briefed on our many targets. Volkswagen van, known to have changed color to avoid capture at any time. Think that might apply to other targets as well, Sergeant. It's pretty clear why they turned you down for officer's candidate school. Find that car, find those or I'm going to make certain you are on the next plane out of the states to Iraq…to serve in the regular army. Am I clear?"

"Yes sir!" The man turned on his heels, obviously fighting down the habit of saluting his superior.

Stupid, stupid man. It was always so hard to break the new ones in. They always seemed to think so conventionally.

It never occurred to him that he might have fallen for the trick himself. It wasn't until later he discovered the secretly recorded footage of Kim Possible's graduation party.

* * *

Hospitals always seemed to smell the same, no matter how modern they tried to appear. Something about rubbing alcohol seemed to penetrate the very brick and stone they were built of. Shego hated the smell.

Her hair was done up in a simple ponytail. It was now down to the middle of her back, though at the moment it was pushed to one side of the pillow where her head lay. She looked to the side as the pastel colored door swung open silently.

"Hey, you." She said weakly, smiling as she recognized her visitor.

Neil had bulked up some in the last year. Secretly fighting super-criminals by night and maintaining decent grades by day could do that to a young man. He brought his hand from behind his back and presented his girlfriend with flowers.

"I'm not even going to ask where you got green roses." A smile fluttered across her face as he set the vase on the stand near her bed.

"Hey, folks like me, we can do anything!" He bragged cheerily. "Oh, and I'm happy to report, a certain bird is back in his cage, finally."

"You sound like Hego." Her smile brightened a little more, though she didn't break into the wide grin she was famous for.

"Yeah, he did say the line. Just like the last time, and the time before and…"

"I get the picture."

"So, what did the doctor's say?"

"To leave the flying to the superheroes who can." She winced as she tried to sit up. "I've got two broken ribs, two more cracked and a severe deep bruise on my hip, a 'hip-pointer'. Still, they want to keep me for another night."

"Huh? I don't get it. That's not so bad. Sounds like you're going to live and all."

"I am, at least." Her smile disappeared and she looked away from him.

"Wha? That's a good thing, isn't it. Shego?... Sherry?" His relieved smile faded in the silence that followed.

"They want to keep me another night because my injuries caused a miscarriage." She said, squinting tears from her eyes, her voice breaking ever so slightly.

"Miss…what? You were….I mean…we were gonna? You didn't tell me!" He finally blurted out.

"Neil, I didn't know until afterwards."

He rushed forward and put his hand behind her head, taking hers in the other. He leaned forward and kissed her forehead. "Uh, it was mine, wasn't it?"

"NEIL? Geez you know how to make a girl feel special."

"Kidding, sorry. I mean, wow, we, uh, just that once.."

"Okay, mister straight A student who must have slept through 'Personal Issues' class. It only takes once."

"I know, I know. Gimme a break, I'm kind of shell shocked here Sher. What did your brothers have to say?"

"They don't know. I told the docs to tell 'em I was just a little more banged up than they liked. I'm sure as hell not telling Hego. He was just starting to warm up to you a little."

"If that's warming up, I don't want to be on his S-list again."

"Neil!"

"Okay. So, they're letting you come home tomorrow?"

"Unless something else complicates things, yes."

"Then I'll be right there waiting for you, no matter what your brothers say."

"Hego won't like that." She said, chuckling slightly.

"Won't matter. GJ just named me as your new liaison officer."

"They what? Neil? You're not even officially part of GJ!"

"No, but after this Aviarius caper, they wanted somebody experienced handling it. Gave me a special pass-key into the tower and everything."

"So, if you're waiting for me there, does that mean you're leaving now?"

"Hell no. I'll be right here for you. I love you too much."

"I know." The smile reappeared on her face, at least a small one. A laugh almost escaped from his gut as he recognized the movie line she was using. He kissed her then, first on her forehead, then gently on her lips. They held each other as best they could, considering the pain she was still in from her fall.

She never told him of the face that started tormenting her dreams that night. The face of the child she would now never bear. Even though the doctors told her after many tests that she would recover fully and be able to bear children in the future, that lost child became a phantom, giving face to her doubts and regrets. Despite never knowing whether it would have been a boy or a girl that cherubic round face made its home in her subconscious.

Seventeen year-olds shouldn't have such dreams.

* * *

Corridor after corridor passed under Liz Evans' feet. The men had brought Max down before she could even react. Panic set in and even the rush of adrenaline couldn't force her intermittent powers to work. All she could see in her mind was the word that passed soundlessly from Max's lips as he fell.

"Run."

She prayed the others had not been caught. They were supposed to wait outside, away from any prying eyes. Obviously somebody had recognized one of them. How else would they have even known they were there? They had traveled from Southern California, straight to Colorado, not stopping except to buy gas for the van. They even took the precaution of changing the paint color again. No, somehow their discovery had been an accident. It had to be.

Dead end! The corridor turned and abruptly stopped. No, it wasn't a dead end! The wall was split in the middle, with an access panel situated in the center. How did Max do this? She though furiously. He just put his hand over the lock and with a quick burst of his power accompanied by a red glow a lock would burst open.

Liz was pondering that question when the door opened, admitting a tall man in a beige shirt, brown slacks and matching brown tie. His short hair was turning gray at the temples. Something about him just screamed "Rocket scientist" and not G-man. Still, she ducked under his arm and ran out into the yard where the various rockets were stored.

"Hey, you can't go out there!" he shouted before breaking into a jog to pursue her. "Miss?"

Panic was setting in again. The man might not be one of the FBI agents stalking her but he could just as easily call security. If that happened they would have no choice but to turn her over to the members of the 'Special Unit.' It wouldn't matter the federal agents were acting without authorization, to the rent-a-cops employed by the center they were simply the 'proper authority.'

She realized too late the storage yard offered no easy escape. Of course not! This was supposed to be a secure area, off-limits to all but the scientists and workers preparing the vehicles. She dashed between the curving hulls of two rockets sitting on their sides, waiting for huge liquid fuel engines to be mounted at their base. There, off to the side, she noticed a ramp, leading up into another space craft. It was the same dull gray metal as the rest but the shape was just a little different. It had two engines at the rear, with stainless steel shrouds tapering behind its bulk. The rest of the rockets had the more familiar bell shaped engine outlets. This looked somehow cleaner, more advanced than all the others. She spared a glance. The man was still standing in the doorway, trying to determine where she had gone in the gathering gloom of the evening.

She waited until he looked in another direction and darted toward the ramp. She hoped against hope there would be ample space to hide in the interior of the ship. It was large, larger than most of the craft in the yard, being more than two hundred feet long by her estimation. She mounted the ramp and tore down the short hallway, taking the short flight of stairs onto the main deck. She pulled up short as her eyes started adjusting to the dim light inside.

Liz was expecting some kind of control center. Instead she found herself looking at what could only be described as a sumptuous living room with an adjoining dining room and kitchenette. It was something she would have expected on a luxury yacht, not on a space ship. A single dim light glowed from the counter at the small stove, providing just enough light to barely make out the details of the room. A large screen dominated one wall, most of the furniture arranged to have an unrestricted view. It seemed much more like a television set than a monitor. It was completely dark at the moment, though a tiny yellow tell-tale glowed from the bottom corner.

As her vision cleared she could make out the twin spiral staircases in alcoves on opposite sides of the kitchenette. Taking the closest one, she found herself in the real control center of the ship. A kernel of an idea was starting to form in her mind. _Was this the ship Max brought us here to find?_

She was lost in thought, staring at the control console when she heard "Miss, what are you doing here?"

* * *

"Allright, Princess. What's our next move?"

Kim held her Kimmunicator, repeatedly pressing the send button. The screen remained blank. Frustrated, she opened the panel on the front, revealing the cell phone style keypad. She tried several numbers in the pre-programs, to no avail. It was like it was receiving no signal whatsoever. She grimly realized that the majority of its functions only worked when controlled from afar by Wade.

The battery meter checked out fine. That meant it wasn't her unit (or Ron's for that matter) that was malfunctioning, it meant somehow the satellite signal was interrupted for some reason or another. She hoped against hope that it was because Wade had to do it to protect them somehow, and that nothing had happened to her friend.

"We can't stay here. Even if we're incommunicado, they will eventually figure some way of tracking us. We have to keep moving."

"That I agree with. For all your shortcomings Kimmie, brains was never your problem."

"I'll let that slip for the moment." She shot the older woman a hooded eye glare.

"KP, if Wade can't contact us, does that mean he is still doing the jamming thingy with the bugs in the car?" Ron wondered.

Kim breathed in sharply. She hadn't considered that. The car was hidden inside the abandoned warehouse adjacent to the container yard. Shego jumped up from her position on the cot and cut the power to the lights. It was suddenly pitch black inside the container. Despite the air conditioning being on for several hours, the moment the cooled air stopped moving it was instantly stuffy again. The heated metal of the container's exterior would have it stifling in minutes.

A tiny point of light opened as Shego found her spy-hole. The light was obscured as the mercenary peered outside. The hole was situated do she could see the best approach to their position.

"I don't see…wait." Shego barely whispered. _Damn, I shouldn't have turned off the AC_! She thought. There were at least two shadowy figures patrolling the yard. The motor for the air system was nowhere near the container, but the sudden silence might have drawn their attention..

"What?" Kim whispered.

"Two, no, make that three men. They've got night vision and they're armed with P90s, just like the team that hit the house." Shego hissed.

"What is this, they buy their weapons at a _Stargate SG-1_ surplus sale?" Ron asked in a low voice.

"Quiet boy." Shego's whisper was barely audible. Somehow in the pitch black her hand found his mouth and clamped over it. He said a silent thank you that she was wearing plain leather gloves and not her former claw tipped fighters. "We've got a problem. If they make our position, we're effectively trapped. This is supposed to be a fall-back position for me, I never intended it as an effective hiding place."

"What about the night vision?" Kim asked. "Won't they be able to see our heat signatures?

"I hope not. I figure we may have a chance to remain undetected since the outer skins of these containers have been baking in the summer sun all day long. Night vision, for the most part, work by gathering ambient light. Some of them are designed to see infra-red, but not with much detail. It would take a computerized heat scanner to pick out our bodies against all this heated metal. No, they're going to rely on a star-light setting…"

"Oh, snap!" Shego hissed. "Stoppable, get over there and grab the door release handle, but don't pull on it until I tell you. Princess, when I say go, make a break for it. Take the clearest path you can."

"Did they see us?"

"They saw something. One of them put his hand to his ear and they all split up, taking cover. I can't see any of them any more."

There was a faint scraping sound from the direction of the bed. In the barest of light Kim could make out a shape moving from there, past her. It brushed against her and she realized it was Shego. She had taken something from under the cot, but it was far to dark to determine what it was."

"Go." She poured as much urgency as she could into the harsh whisper.

Ron yanked on the handle, which still responded silently. Shego's sudden kick slamming the two halves outward wasn't. Kim was the first off the container, somersaulting twice before landing on the pavement in a crouch. The rifle toting goon didn't even have time to turn as she spun on one foot, sending the other leg out, knocking the man's feet from under him.

Instead of jumping to the ground, Shego made her way up to the third level of containers. Her hands were fully ablaze. Sparks flew as automatic weapons fire sought to bring her down.

These guys were playing for keeps.

Kim sprang upwards, catching another man in the mid-section just as he rounded the corner of the large metal crate. He went down with an audible 'oomph'. She could sense another man coming up behind her. She didn't turn to face him, but heard the crunch as Ron landed on him with a flying kick. So many times he tried that before, finally he got to land it. A secret smile played across her lips showing the pride she felt in her man Ron. He had a long way to go to catch up to her in ability, but he was no longer just the distraction. He was her partner. Partner for missions, partner in love.

Partner for life! She could feel the tiny ring under her mission glove. It was their little secret for now, but here, on their now interrupted vacation she wore it openly. It's a wonder that Neil and Shego hadn't seen it and commented on it yet. It really was a small ring, but it carried with it all the meaning and love that a gaudy chunk of super-hard compacted carbon that could weigh down an arm did. It wasn't the size of the rock, but the question and answer that went with it.

She still made him promise to ask her again in front of her parents…when the time was right.

There was a horrible metal on metal crunch some several rows down from where they stood their ground, followed by flashes of distinctly green light. She certainly hoped Shego wasn't killing their attackers, but she held onto the fact they had never heard of her actually murdering anyone. Knocking out, hurting, maiming, but never killing. Of course, it was a fine distinction between trying to cause one to wink out of existence due to embarrassment and actually outright trying to kill you, but there was a sort of hesitancy in such an act like they actually didn't intend for it to work. Add the fact that it was mostly Drakken involved in that one too.

She dropped another opponent as she heard the gun go off. There was a startled yelp just behind her…

…and she saw Ron go down out of the corner of her eye.

A red haze enveloped her, filling her vision. The first man she had taken down had recovered. Now he was leveling his weapon at her. Instinct and experience took over. Her mind didn't plan the attack, it just simply came of its own volition. In the blink of an eye the man was unconscious, his helmet rolling away, the straps snapped from their anchors.

She grabbed Ron's shoulders. He moaned loudly and she realized late that at least one of the bullets had ripped through his left shoulder. His black shirt was wet, matted with his blood. She had to get him away. This was different and far more dangerous than the usual goons and henchmen she faced. These people didn't seem intent on capturing them, they seemed to want them dead. Pain or no, she had to get him away. She had to get to the car, it was her only hope. Where had Shego gone? Had she taken her usual tack and abandoned them? Well, to hell with her. Ron came first.

What was that high pitched whine?

Before she could identify the sound, four men appeared in front of her, their rifles leveled at her. Half a second stretched into eternity. She thought she could hear their fingers tightening on the triggers of the peculiar rifles they carried. One of them spoke, his voice sounding like a record being slowed by a restraining thumb.

"Kim possible, you are under arrest!"

As the man finished the word arrest, the whine grew louder and something slammed into Kim's mid-section. She rocketed straight through the picket of black-clad men, then was carried upwards, up, over the darkened waters of the Savannah River. Downriver lay the brilliant lights illuminating the bridge and the twinkling lights of the tourists and city dwellers out for a night on River Street. They were too far away to hear her screaming.

**"ROOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOON!"**

**_to be continued!_**


	8. Do You Really Want to Hurt Me?

_**Soulmates of the Fury**_

* * *

**Chapter 8: Do You Really Want to Hurt Me?**

* * *

Shego shrugged out of the harness of the glider pack she had stolen from the Valkyrie the year before. She balanced the ion powered flying device between two roots so it would not be sitting in the much. It may have been military issue from almost five hundred years in the future but she didn't want to take any chances. She looked up at Kim and took two steps back involuntarily. She knew white hot rage when she saw it.

"You left him." Kim hissed through teeth clenched so tight Shego was sure they would splinter.

"Oh, thank you Shego for pulling my skinny ass out of the fire back there." The older woman mocked, instantly regretting doing so.

"YOU LEFT HIM!" Kim screamed at the top of her lungs.

"How about a little louder there, Princess. I don't think they heard you in Colum…oomph!" the wind went out of her as Kim's foot connected with her chest, slamming her against a cypress tree with enough force to make her wonder if the enraged teen was wearing her strength enhancing battlesuit under her artfully faded olive cargo pants. For the first time since reactivating her power when her home was attacked she was glad it was there. If it had been suppressed the impact would have put her down for the count.

Kim pressed her attack, putting Shego on the defensive, thinking how strange it was that the tables were now turned. Always before Kim had battled her aiming to subdue. Now re rage had taken over and her aim was to actually hurt her, or worse. It was too dark in the filter moonlight to see her opponent's eyes, but she could see the expression on her face. The rage, the pain, the despair. She recognized it and the sight wrenched her gut into knots. Somehow, even though this younger woman was her sworn enemy, she couldn't bear exposing her to that fate.

"Kim! Stop this!"

She wouldn't stop. So grim was her determination to harm Shego that she didn't even bother with her usual banter. It was frightening, even to an experienced fighter like Shego. Finally she screamed as she hurled her fists at her as fast as she could throw them. "You left him to die!"

"Kim! Listen to me! KIM!" She was hoping that using her actual name rather than one of her snide pet names would get through to her. It didn't seem to be working.

"Ron is my whole world!" Kim raged on. "Now you've killed him!" She screamed, tears running down her face. For the first time Shego saw a frightened young woman, not the enemy she had known for so long. That didn't stem her own rage and frustration.

Green fire burst from Shego's hands for the first time since Kim attacked her. It exploded with such ferocity that it ran up her arms, fire dripping to the ground like water from a fountain. "HOW DO YOU THINK I FEEL ABOUT NEIL!" she screamed with unhinged rage.

Kim hesitated, Shego's words finally reaching past her fury.

"Listen to me carefully, Kim. He…is…not…dead!"

"He was shot!" Rage was starting to turn to despair. "We needed to get him away from there. They were trying to kill us and they got him!"

Shego knew Kim still wasn't thinking clearly. "Do you remember what their team leader said to you right before I grabbed you? He said you were under arrest."

"The why did they shoot Ron?"

"Because you attacked them. They responded the way they were trained to. Look, they weren't sent to kill us, they were sent to bring us in. We're the ones who turned it into a fire fight."

Kim dropped to her knees, paying no heed to the muck that made up the ground. "How can you be sure about that?"

"If they wanted you dead we wouldn't be having this conversation right now. There wouldn't have been anything I could do when they got the drop on you. They wouldn't have wasted time telling you that you're under arrest, they'd have just pulled the trigger."

"But we left him!"

"Kim, get your head around this. He was hurt. Badly, yes…" Kim moaned slightly hearing that."…but his best chance was for them to take him in. I'm assuming those guys weren't GJ based on their combat style, so I just have to figure they were FBI or something. That means they are taking him to medical aid as we speak. He's in good hands and we are free to do something about it.

Kim was finally calming down enough to think straight, at least partially. "So, if they are Feds why don't I just turn myself in so all of this can be sorted out?"

"Because they probably think now you're working with me. Global Justice may be willing to look the other way where you and I are concerned but the feds are a whole other ball of wax. Plus Neil was working on something for GJ that involved a group in the FBI that was more than a little hinky. You turn yourself in, you may sort out things with you and Ron, but Neil, who doesn't have the benefit of being an international celebrity may just up and disappear!"

"Is that was he was doing that night?"

"Yes. He rescued some girl from a facility hidden somewhere between here and Hilton Head. It was something about them using her for illegal experiments." Shego grabbed the Gli-Pak by it's carrying handle. "Now that you've got that out of your system, we've got to keep moving. We can't afford to assume they can't still track us somehow, especially if they've gained access to Nerd-Boy's hardware."

"His name is Wade." Kim corrected petulantly.

"Well, sorry. I honestly didn't remember it. It's not my shtick, I've never met him after all. "That said, she started off in the direction of a growing rumble.

* * *

Several hours passed in near silence. Every so often they would pass a road or some old homes or even an isolated farm as the freight train made its way presumably toward Atlanta.

"I'm sorry, Shego."

"Like you say all the time, kid. No big. I know how you feel about corn-top."

"Yeah, it is big. I was all wrapped up worried about Ron and I never even stopped to consider your feelings about Neil." Kim slid closer to the other woman. "You are not the same woman I've been fighting with all these years, Shego. I'd have never expected this from you about a man. Plus, I kind of expected you had some feelings for, well, you-know-who."

"Doctor D?"

"Yeah. Didn't want to upset you bringing up his name."

"That's okay." She sniffed. "I'm not really being fair to him. It's just, it hurt me so much when he up and left me when his Valkyrie robots failed."

"Hurt you, or did it have something to do with Neil being there."

"Yeah, maybe. Something in me snapped and all I could do was blame it on Drew."

"Drew? I've never heard you call him by his real name before."

"I did it to irritate him, mostly. I was pretty good at irritating him. Anyway, yeah, I had some feeling for him. Hard not to work that closely with somebody that long, to put our lives in danger over and over without something coming out of it. Then that crap with the moodulator happened and I backed off. I mean WAY off."

"I realized after that happened I went after Ron because it amped up real feelings I had for him, though I subconsciously denied it for a long time afterwards."

"I think that's what scared me. See, Drakken's almost old enough to be my father. Plus, he's not much to look at. I mean, he's blue for heaven's sake."

"So says the green woman."

"I'm a hypocrite, I'll be the first to admit it." Shego stopped and looked at Kim. Thoughts flashed through her confused mind. Years of conditioning to hate the red-haired teenager were at the forefront, but there was also a question mark burning in her head.

Do you really hate her? Does she really hate you? They had each said that, on several occasions.

Did enemies have to hate each other?

If it were not for being on the opposite sides of the law, would they even be enemies. Drakken once asked her "What are you, her sister all of a sudden?"

Of course, the two of them had been trying to cause her demise at the time.

But, here they were, the two of them sitting side by side in a gently rocking railroad car, somewhere on the line between Savannah and Atlanta. Both of them were separated from the men they loved. Love? Yes, I guess if it really came down to it, she loved Neil. She would have to, wouldn't she? But she also loved Drakken. He was evil, ugly, blue, scarred and utterly repulsive but she somehow still loved him. Not the way she now realized she loved Neil, but the feelings really were there.

If she got out of this alive, she made a vow to find a way to visit Drakken. It wouldn't be easy, but she would find a way, green skin or no. Thinking of her appearance caused her mind to wander back to Neil again. Tears welled in her eyes. Dammit, why was she like this? She should be kicking ass and taking names, not crying like some lost little girl.

Suddenly she was aware that Kim was holding her tightly. Arms wrapped around her and held her close. Automatically, her arms closed around the younger woman. Both of them were now crying openly. Finally, Shego broke away.

"Now, that was something for all those weirdoes in the chat rooms would like." Shego half chuckled through her sobs.

"Huh?"

"You know, those people who think you'd ditch Stoppable for some Girl/Girl action."

"Ewwwwwwwwww! Remind me not to hug you again!" Kim shook her hands disgustedly.

"Hey, Princess, I don't swing that way…and…thanks. I needed that."

"Yeah, the two of us acting like two head-cases trying to work off a bad case of PMS." Kim smiled half-heartedly.

"Won't have to worry about PMS myself for a while yet."

"Huh?" Kim had to ask again.

"I'm about six weeks pregnant." Shego said, sobs coming back into her voice.

"Pre…pregnant? I thought the two of you weren't a couple."

"Officially? No, he hasn't said 'do you want to go steady with me' again. But, yeah, I have slept with him a couple times."

"Wow. I mean…huh."

"When he figured out he could change my appearance he, like, well, kind of had to touch me…all over. It wasn't supposed to be sensual but good lord, something about his power is so…well, _sensual_. We both kind of lost control."

"But you two have separate rooms. I mean, that seems a bit strange if you're going to be parents."

"Guess what the fearless criminal hasn't had the guts to do, Princess?"

"He doesn't know?"

"No. I've only known for a couple weeks. I guess I wasn't expecting it, until I was late. We really haven't talked about the last time we, you know, since. I think he's decided he's just a friend, with occasional benefits. At least you're smart enough."

"Smart? What are you talking…"

"I saw you taking your meds. Not many things come in those little compacts, you know."

Kim turned as red as her hair. "I'm, er, hey! It's not like that. Mom's had me taking those since I started high school."

"Whoa, hold the phone there! You've got a Daddy who threatens to send boys into orbit if they so much as bring you home late and your mother has you set up on birth control? Oh, this is rich."

"Shego! Look closely at me. Tell me what you see?"

"Huh? I don't get…what am I supposed to see?"

"That's it. Nothing. When I was fifteen I started to develop an acne problem. That particular brand is supposed to help with complexion problems, with the extra benefit that the pills regulate me. With all the travel, strange sleep hours and strange food my system needed something to even me out. She didn't give me those so I could jump in the sack with every boy I went out with!"

"Okay, chill, Princess. I've seen the commercials for that stuff, I get it. Just seems way convenient for you and Stoppable…"

"Can't you just call him Ron?"

"No, sounds weird when I say it."

"Any hew, that doesn't matter because we're waiting."

"Waiting? Waiting for what. If there ever was a perfect time for your 'first time' it was on this trip you're supposed to be on. You mean you had that poor boy in your bed and all you did was sleep?"

"Precisely."

"God, I thought I was the evil one. You do know you're killing him?"

"That is _not_ killing him. Besides, we both agreed we would wait."

"Earth to Kimmie! What are you waiting for?"

"Until we're married."

Shego blinked, twice. "Same question, what are you waiting for?"

"Shego! In case you haven't noticed, we're eighteen. We've been going steady for just over a year. In a few weeks we're going to college. The last thing we need is to get married."

"Oh, so tell me, is it because you want to play the field? You two have been together WAY longer than a year. You two are picture perfect examples of 'old marrieds.' If you mean to spend your life with him, why not go off to college as man and wife?"

"Because, I don't know, because the way I was raised we're just too young. The way I figure it, we'll probably get married a year or so after we graduate."

"Just sounds to me, Princess, like you'd be going there advertising that you're 'with him' but not totally! There are a whole lot of girls out there who will fall all over themselves to get at a guy like Snapable…"

"Snapable? I think you're reaching now."

"Yeah, well, maybe. Anyway, he's not heinous or anything and now that he's getting properly tall and filling out a little, he's turning into a nice little hottie. Hmmm. Maybe since he's not permanently attached yet, think you'd like to share?"

"Over my dead body!"

"Hey, that can still be arranged." A tiny flame of brilliant green flickered at the end of Shego's finger.

"Anytime, Shego." Kim laughed.

* * *

"Well?" Starler asked as Oray left the cell.

"The bullet just got meat. He didn't lose too much blood, so he's not in any real danger. Got the slug out with no muss or fuss so he won't have to live with a scar. He's going to be out for at least the rest of the night, if not longer."

"That's what you said about Argus." Starler stated flatly.

"Well, there are always surprises, but I don't think we'll have too much from Stoppable. He's pretty well known and he's never demonstrated anything beyond some basic fighting skills he picked up from his girlfriend. I think this time we're dealing with a plain old garden variety human being."

"I hope you're right. How are your tests going with Argus?"

"He has an amazing tolerance for the drugs, but he still responds normally to the shock treatments. I think we'll be able to control him."

"And the girl?"

"I think that was a bust after all. Yes, she's one of them, but I don't think she's the one we thought. It seems we have reports the real Tess Harding met her demise in New Mexico when the base went up."

"The what is she? A clone?"

"I have the impression that every one of them are technically clones. This one was nowhere near as educated as the rest seem to be. She was living like a street person. Maybe she's a discarded backup copy of the originals. I don't have enough information and my access to her is rather limited at the moment."

"Don't worry, Doctor. We'll be getting her back soon enough, especially once we have some jurisdiction issues ironed out."

Oray smiled in agreement.

* * *

"You want to run that by me again?" Doctor Possible was sitting in the leather acceleration lounge of the starship, opposite Liz.

"Okay, these people are technically part of the FBI, but they're not. Almost three years ago they were officially disbanded by their leader when they were exposed for conducting illegal operations. Then they tried to first kidnap my friends, my husband and me. Finally they tried to assassinate us at our graduation." She stopped and frowned. "You are so not believing this."

"Well, this isn't any more strange than some of the things my daughter gets into. It's your being married that I can't get my head around. You don't even look like you're her age yet."

"I'm nineteen, and I've been married about eight months now."

James Possible just shook his head. Kids today! Just hope Kim doesn't want to rush into anything with Ronald!

"Wait a minute. Strange things your daughter tells you? You said your name was Doctor Possible? You're Kim Possible's father?"

"In the flesh. You follow her on the news?"

"That, and I used to chat with Wade all the time."

"I don't think he's ever mentioned…"

"Oh, he might not want to bore you with this stuff. We actually chatted on one of the computer geek IRC channels. He knows me as 'Killercat.'"

"You don't look like a killer cat."

"I know. I didn't even have a pet. My parents and I lived upstairs from our restaurant."

"Oh, which one? I went to several of the festivals in Roswell."

"The Crashdown. It's a diner."

"With the UFO sign! I remember that one! And the waitresses with antennas in their hair."

"That was probably me, or my girlfriend Maria. Anyway, we never had pets because we didn't want them getting into the restaurant and causing problems with the health department"

"Tell me about it." He was remembering the time Ron got shut down at the school because he pet Naked Mole Rat, Rufus, was serving the food. "So why were the two of you here?"

"I ran across a mention online that there was an actual, real space ship that was seen landing here in Middleton. We came to the Space Center to find some leads. Think we found a pretty big one? So, Doc? Do you think your daughter can help us?"

"That all depends."

"On what?"

"On whether the FBI catches her first."


	9. Will You?

_**Soulmates of the Fury**_

* * *

**Chapter 9: Will You?**

* * *

Ron opened the hood and stared at the interior. _Oh please, lord, not now! Not tonight!_ What was he doing? Exactly what am I supposed to see that's going to tell me how to get this hunk of junk running in the next five minutes?

He got back into the driver's seat and turned the key again. Nothing happened. There was no quiet clicking meaning the battery was in the process of dying. No, the dome light came on when he opened the door. The headlights were still on. His car still had electrical power. He turned the key again. Zilch! Nada! What did that mean? How come they didn't teach Auto Shop in school any more? Dad took Shop! Why couldn't I? For that matter, why did Dad insist I save money to buy this used hunk of garbage? He's got enough of my money squirreled away for me to buy a Porsche!

Then again, he realized, thoughts like that were precisely why he couldn't touch the greater chunk of that money until he turned twenty one. Maturity can be such a bummer sometimes.

There in the gloomy light of the interior lights he noticed his hands were covered in engine dirt.

-sigh-

He was sitting there on the edge of the drivers seat, his head hanging low when a brand new, baby blue Mustang convertible pulled up beside him. He didn't look up until the driver spoke.

"Loser-mobile conk out on you again, Mad Dawg?"

Ron didn't want to look up. He didn't want this. Not now, not ever if you really thought about it. The last thing he needed was to get into a verbal battle with Bonnie Rockwaller.

"Duh!" was all he could get out.

Bonnie looked at the young man, smiling viciously. Any one of a dozen hurtful barbs sprang to mind, ready to be hurled at her main rival's boyfriend and near life-long companion. Then she started to wonder. Why is the Loser so dressed up? Wasn't K's B-day a couple weeks ago? That mean's Stoppable's birthday was just last week! Surely they had already had their special celebrations! Why would he be dressed to the nines for a date? Unless…

_No! This is so rich! The loser is even screwing this up!_

She looked at him a moment. He was so dejected. This wasn't right. Being rivals is one thing, watching something like this go wrong is another thing completely. This sort of thing was not to be screwed up. Not if she had anything to do with it.

Plus she would have something to hang over them _FOREVER!_

"Get in, Ron." She reached over and opened the passenger door.

"Huh?"

"I said get in before I change my mind."

He numbly consented, not bothering to lock his old wreck. The standing joke was that somebody would come along and do $50 worth of damage to it – that is, to steal it outright.

Honestly, right now that would be cheaper than hiring a tow truck to drag it home again.

"Here." Bonnie handed Ron a moist-nap for his dirty hands, followed by a small bottle of hand sanitizer. Sure, it wouldn't hurt for his hands to smell like gardenias!

In minutes they were in front of the Possible home. Bonnie simply pulled up to the curb and let Ron out.

"Thanks, Bonnie. I really don't know what to say."

"Just don't screw this up."

"What do you…"

"Uh huh. Just for one night, don't be a loser. K deserves better than that." With that she sped off, not waiting for Ron to say anything else.

James Possible was on the porch, first wondering why Ron was ten minutes late, then utterly perplexed that he was dropped off by none other than Bonnie Rockwaller.

"Car trouble Ronald?"

"Doctor P, I am beginning to think that my car was a trap set for me by Motor Ed or something."

"That bad, huh?"

"Worse…" his words trailed off as he looked up towards the landing.

Kim knew it was his favorite dress. Tight, black, short, clinging to every curve. It was the same dress she had put on to impress him when she was under the sway of the Moodulator. Even after they began dating, Kim left the dress in the back of her closet, thinking that it would bring up bad memories, until Ron said that the first memory it brought back was of the first time she kissed him. It still only made an appearance on special occasions and this, he thought, was more than special.

Somewhere over the last thirteen months the sight of Ron's eyes bulging out of his head for his daughter had stopped causing James Possible to go into heart palpitations.

Ron told Kim earlier that day that he wanted to go on a special date that night so they could properly celebrate becoming adults just between the two of them (their birthdays being family celebrations.) She enthusiastically agreed, loving the chance to really dress up and go out with her beau.

Kim's parents watched as the two headed for her car, their daughter already grilling Ron why on Earth Bonnie Rockwaller had seen fit to take pity on him.

"Say, I do wonder why she would do that." James said, lost in thought as the tiny car pulled away.

"I think she sensed just how special tonight is supposed to be. She may be a rotten little you-know-what, but I don't think even she could be that mean." His wife told him.

"Special? You don't mean…"

"Um hmm." She replied, smiling.

"Why, I'm going to. That little! My Kimmie-cub!"

"James, not that! Get your mind out of the gutter. All dressed up, dinner reservations…"

He puzzled his wife's comments for a moment, realization coming slowly. "I can't believe this! I always hoped Ronald would ask permission first!"

"He will. This is for them."

"They're too young!"

"James, we were nineteen and we still waited almost three years. Look at me! Those two are good kids. They are the best kids any parent could hope for. They will do the right thing. I love them and I trust them…as should you!"

Ron was starting to relax again. Plan B was now in effect. In fact, he wish he had thought about asking Kim to come pick him up in her car anyway, but something inside of him said that would be wrong. Girlfriends simply did not pick their dates up, not if those dates were proper gentlemen. That meant taking an almost disastrous chance with his old car. He still was reeling at the divine providence of Bonnie coming to the rescue. What was that about?

No matter. The evening was back on track. They arrived at the restaurant at precisely the time indicated by his reservations. It was perhaps the most exclusive eatery in all of the Tri-city area and it was almost always booked weeks in advance, sometimes even months. He knew he had burned up the majority of his favors securing the reservations, but it would be worth it. If everything else came off as planned it most certainly would be.

This also helped his cover story. If pressed, he would simply say that he called for a dress-up date because of an opportunity to take Kim there.

And there she was, sitting across the white linen table from him, smiling that wonderful smile, green eyes glittering. It took all of his concentration not to let the butterflies in his stomach ruin the moment. He even had his line planned out. When the waiter brought their salads he would ask "Would you like some extra _karats_ with yours?"

Rufus, upon hearing that one, simply grabbed his throat and made gagging sounds.

Everyone's a critic.

Everything was in place. There was the waiter, just leaving the kitchen, two dinner salads on a tray. He put his hand in his pocket, his fingers closing on a very special object…

…and the lights winked out.

The whole restaurant was plunged into darkness. Not only that, but it was apparent the whole city block had lost power. Slowly their eyes adjusted to the mellow light of the single candles flickering on each table.

"Oh man!" Ron muttered, pushing the item deep into his pocket.

"Ladies and gentlemen." The maitre d announced. "I have just gotten off the phone with zee power company and zey say it will be at least three hours before zey can restore our electricity. I regret that, because of safety regulations, we will be force to close for the evening."

Ron didn't even hear him finish the statement. He just closed his eyes and silently counted to ten.

Time for Plan C.

Just what was Plan C anyway?

Somehow, dining and dancing at Bueno Nacho just didn't seem appropriate! Somehow he was again faced with the utter demolition of his planes.

No!

"KP, I think there's another place just on the other side of Mid-Town park. It's not nearly as nice as this, but I hear they make a Bon-diggity gourmet burger!"

"Sounds nice." She replied. She actually liked the place, though she had never actually told Ron that was one of the few places she had once gone to with Josh Mankey. Not that it mattered…yet…yes, it did matter. Not because of Josh but because of Ron. He risked his life to save hers that night and still loved and respected her enough to leave and let her finish her date. That was memory she wanted to keep from that time. Plus this time she wouldn't see Shego slipping up behind her trying to TP her.

They walked through the tree-lined park where once Ron had blown pollen toward her, where "Embarrassment Ninjas" had tried to seal her doom, where her little brothers had played a home movie of her taking a bath. All of that made her smile. It was all part of what led to her walking, hand in hand with the man she loved.

"KP, tell me something."

"Anything."

"Do you believe in soul mates?"

"You mean like with that Animology stuff?"

"Well, sort of. Do you think two people's souls are meant to be together?"

"Not like the 'Blue Fox,' 'Pink Sloth' type of thing. I think two people can be Soulmates, but it takes work. It has to be something they both want. I refuse to believe that two people can be meant to be together if they don't want to. That's the part of those 'Pini-elf' books I really never liked. I also believe in it because we've met a couple who are real Soulmates."

"You mean Jimmy and Dona?" a year ago they met the couple. They were from a completely different universe, one existing simultaneously with theirs.

"Yeah. Dona told me that they went to see this wizard named Arcus Oray so he could perform some spell that would merge their souls. In the process, the found out they had already done it by themselves."

She realized the Ron had stopped. They were standing in almost the same spot where he had saved her life several years before.

"KP, would you do that for me?"

"In a heartbeat, Ron Stoppable."

His trademark goofy grin spread over his freckled features. She thought for a moment he was going to kiss her to complete such a perfectly romantic moment. He surprised her when, instead, he dropped to one knee, pulling a velvet box out of his pocket.

"Kim Possible, will you be my Soulmate? Will you marry me?"

Her hands went to her mouth and tears started forming at the corners of her eyes. She reached for his hands and started to answer.

"Y…" was all she got out as the sprinklers came on, blasting both of them squarely in the face.

'THAT'S THE LAST STR…" Ron started to bellow when Kim gripped his hands and pulled him to his feet.

"Yes, Ron. YES YES YES!" she shouted, not caring that the two of them were getting solidly drenched.

His goofy grin returned. It had been a very Stoppable proposal!

"Now let's go home, get dried off and put on some clothes we can go to Bueno Nacho in." She suggested, pulling him after her.

* * *

Slowly the memory he was replaying in his dreams was replaced with a new feeling as consciousness returned. Pain was the first thing that registered as Ron awakened. It was a dull, distant pain but it was still there. It was the kind of pain that would not let you forget it, though it could be managed. He struggled to remember what had happened. He had opened the container door. Kim and Shego jumped out first, followed closely by Ron. He could remember jumping from their elevated position and dropping the one goon. Then came the pain.

Somehow he realized that he had been shot.

Carefully he opened his eyes. Focus came slowly. He must have still been under the influence of what they were giving him for pain. That meant he would be in agony if it was allowed to wear off. Even turning his head was painful. It felt like a knife lancing through his shoulder.

He was in some sort of hospital bed, but instead of the sterile smelling room he would expect from a proper medical center he was in what looked much more like a lab. There were unidentifiable instruments on each of the several counters. Moving his head as far as he dared, he could make out the door. It wasn't solid like a hospital door, it seemed to be made of two inch thick clear plastic, probably Lexan. There were air holes cut into it at regular intervals. The holes were just small enough that he knew he would be unable to get his hand through one.

Was this a lab or a prison?

A man in a white lab coat stepped up to the door and passed a card through a reader. The door clicked and he pulled it open, coming inside. "Ah, it looks like you are awake, finally. Allow me to introduce myself. I am Doctor Oray."

The door swung shut with an audible click.

It was a prison.

* * *

"Okay, what have we got?" Shego leaned on the railing, watching the shoppers milling around Underground Atlanta. They had abandoned the freight train before dawn, making their way to a subway station. The main hub of the Atlanta subway system was located adjacent to the shopping complex.

"One still-dead Kimmunicator, a swiss army knife and about forty dollars and some change." Kim counted off the contents of her pockets.

"All those pockets on those cargos and that's all you've got? Good grief, Kimmie, how were you expecting to pay for the rest of your vacation, keep glomming onto friend like Neil?"

Kim shot her an indignant look. "Honest people get to use their bank cards."

Shego smiled. "Nice Snark there Princess, but guess what? I've got a gold card!" She singsonged.

"Oh, and what, pray tell, is the alias on it? Or does it just have Shego? I so can't believe any bank would extend villains credit."

"You'd be surprised. But this one is one of my favorites, Sheila Ogehs."

"Ogehs? Oh, come on, that name is so last season. GJ uncovered it months ago when you tried taking control of that Norwegian bank."

"It worked the last time I used it."

"Really? Then why were you griping about Neil not being able to afford buying you the beer you like?"

"The IGA on the island didn't take this card."

"Sure, Shego. Face it, that alias is busted. Use that card and whether it works or not, you're just sending up a red flag where you are."

"Is that how…Wade?...tracked me?"

"No. But he has access to special satellites that can pinpoint your power signature. You're just lucky you've been suppressing them for the last few months."

"Really? Dang, I just thought it was me keeping my nose clean."

"Never mind. What else do you have?"

"I've got about five hundred in cash on me."

"Good, then our next move is to find a hotel."

"What in the world for?"

Kim pulled her collar up to her nose and sniffed. "We've been on the run for thirty six hours. We've been wearing the same clothes and we've been in a container with a bag of rotten burritos, fighting in a swamp and trying to catch forty winks in a box car that hasn't been scrubbed since the Nixon administration. Before we meet this guy you know, I want to at least have a shower."

"Gotta admit," Shego said with a snide grin, "You _are_ the brains of your outfit."


	10. Portal to Darkness

_**Soulmates of the Fury**_

* * *

**Chapter 10: Portal to Darkness**

* * *

Jahan Starler carefully closed the door to his private office. He was agitated but this was not the time to let that show. He had just come from the Assistant Director's and had basically been called on the carpet to explain his recent expenditures. He was glad that he could shield his true intentions with the pursuit of Shego and her new accomplice, Kim Possible but it was growing more and more difficult to keep his technical superior in the dark.

Maybe if those two in the basement would start screwing up again! That would get Skinner off his back.

No matter. One of his targets was now in custody and would soon be delivered to his secret base of operations in the South Carolina Low Country. The other three could not be found. Parker had simply vanished. Not even the tracking devices they were secretly employing at the Middleton Space Center had been able to get a bead on her.

Then there was the latest problem with Max Evans. He had seen the report Pierce originally filed when he had the boy in custody some years before. It was clear then he was some kind of alien/human hybrid. Purely human physiology, but with blood cells that were anything but. Those results were corroborated with the tests run on the "Ava" alien. Unfortunately, this time around they could find absolutely no evidence the boy was even part alien. Just like with Argus, all the tests came back as baseline human.

Had Evans found some way to mask his alien heritage? Was this Argus another one of them? Perhaps the Master would know.

Starler was thankful to have a private office of his own. In the chain of command, he reported directly to the Assistant Director. In reality, he made his real reports to a group of military leaders and other secret agencies who needed the services of the "Special Unit." He knew what he was doing was patently illegal, but he didn't care.

What nobody else knew was that he didn't have any kind of notion that what he was doing was for the greater good of the American people. Maybe his predecessors had felt that way, but they were weak, and in the end, easily replaced. They had been stupid, trying to assassinate the four aliens at their graduation! Didn't they see the true value in those four?

In the back of his office was a room originally intended to be a large supply closet. It had no windows and was well insulated from the rest of the building. Special circuitry was employed in the structure to make espionage more difficult. Any known (and the FBI knew quite many) signal could be jammed, traced and otherwise dealt with. Still, he took a device from his pocket and waved it about the room, checking his watch, ever mindful of the time. Finally, he shut the door and turned out the light. He kneeled in the center of the room and bowed his head.

He was not praying.

A point of light formed in front of him, growing, spreading until a disk of watery light hung about a foot from the floor. If anyone from that early in the 21st Century had ever seen one, they would have thought the effect was created by a Chronal Manipulator. Instead, this was no such device, it was a lens, a portal opened by a being of great power and great darkness, from a distant world not yet visited by Earth-born mankind.

"_Speak, my servant!_" the voice boomed in his mind. Despite the utter silence of the chamber, Starler imagined that the very wall were shaken by the voice.

"All goes according to your plan, my Master. We have captured one of the Royal Four. Soon we will be able to force Kivar to do your bidding. I have also uncovered more information the agents who preceded me sought to conceal. There were indeed eight pods brought to this planet by the Antarian rebels. I believe they produced two sets of the Royal Four, though the Xan of the primary set is the only one to possess the Royal Seal."

"_What of these duplicates?_"

"We have found what we believe to be the duplicate of Xan's mate, Ava. This may be even more beneficial than relying on the theory that the Prime Ava's essence was transferred to Prime Xan's new mate."

"_Interesting. Pursue this line of thought, but do not deviate from the original plan. We need the entire four, intact. If this second 'Ava' is of use, so much the better but I have foreseen the bond between Xan and his new bride is stronger than the original by far."_

"_I also see that there is another."_

"Yes, my Master. When we first captured the secondary hybrid, she was rescued from our facility by an unknown champion. My physician is now trying to determine if he is indeed another Antarian, perhaps one of their genetically engineered protectors. I do not believe this, as these protectors only look human. So far he has proven to be perfectly human, but there is evidence he has been in contact with a psychokinetic healer at some point."

"_What have you learned of him?"_

"He appears to be an ordinary man running an ordinary business, but he is in fact some kind of warrior. We finally had to chain him up to keep him from injuring my men."

"_He is unimportant. Learn all that is to be learned about him then dispose of him. Keep your focus on finding the Royal Four. They hold the key to revealing the Trinity of the Effurien."_

The Trinity? The peasants often talked about them. They called them the "Trinity of the Fury" and believed they would one day rise to defeat his Master. Starler had always been told before that the Royal Four were needed to force Kivar, the despot of Antar into a political alliance with his homeworld, the planet Arkonia. How were they involved in the mythical heroes the rabble prayed to?

"We are closer than ever before, my Master. The remaining three will stop at nothing to free their King. We will spring our trap when they make their attempt. Velondra, Rath and the bearer of Ava's essence will be in our control. I already have Doctor Oray preparing King Xan so he will summon them to him."

"_Oray?"_

"Yes, my Master. Doctor Arthur Oray. He is a decorated medical researcher who we recruited to aid in their capture. He has proven very dedicated to our cause."

"_Be vigilant, my Servant. That name has great meaning to me. Be certain of his allegiance but be wary of him. This is too much of a coincidence and there is too much at stake. If you have any doubts about this Doctor, eliminate him at once."_

"It will be done, my Master." As he spoke, the lens disappeared, leaving him alone once more in the darkened room.

Why was the Podondrin, Master of Arkonia, Living god of the Triune World so concerned about an ordinary man? Was it simply his name? He had heard that name before, but it had absolutely no connection to this world.

Arcus Oray, the Mage of the Trinity, had been dead for over eight hundred years!

* * *

Doctor James Possible was worried. The FBI made a show of pulling out of the Space Center but he knew the place was still being watched. The girl who was hiding in the mysterious space ship said they knew she was there somewhere. He only hoped that what he knew about the craft held true. Even with most of the internal systems powered down it had properties that made it difficult and perhaps impossible to track her inside. To all outside observers the ship looked like just another partially completed experimental rocket held in their storage yard.

It helped that it had an exterior coating just like his daughter had on her car. In fact, that was where they had discovered the chameleon paint Wade finished her PT Cruiser with. Once the vehicle returned to Earth, it's apparent owner had asked if he could hide it among the other rockets. James had immediately agreed, though he was concerned about a teal green and tan starship among the dull gray metal of his G-series experiments. Neil Argus had replied by giving the onboard computer a series of commands. The outer skin shifted color, until it matched the others in the storage yard.

The X.S.S. Trinity was hidden in plain sight!

Then came the unexpected call. Now he was once again waiting in the lobby of the center, wondering exactly why the young computer genius and master gadgeteer of Team Possible wanted to meet with him about a homework assignment! He would be more than glad to help the boy, but wasn't he working on his doctor's thesis? James Possible knew he was intelligent, but Wade Load was already a quantum leap ahead of him. He was far more likely to enlist the boy's aid to unravel the secrets of the hidden space yacht than to provide him help. Then there was the fact he had never seen him face to face. He was always the chubby little boy seen on Kim's pocket sized screen.

He was even more surprised when he spotted him in the modest crowd of visitors. Despite all that was going on he could not suppress a grin as he motioned him over to him. In all that time he figured Wade was short, even for his age. It dawned on him that he had always been seated in his computer lab.

Wade was tall enough to look him straight in the eye.

He was otherwise exactly the same rotund featured boy, just starting his teen years. Though he was just as tall as he was, he was almost twice as big, and not all of it was the result of the uncounted gallons of soda he consumed. Some of his bulk was actually backed up by muscle mass. He would never be described as ripped but he wasn't as soft looking in person as he always imagined.

"Wade, so glad to finally meet you in person. Your…taller than I thought."

"Actually, Doctor Possible, I've been going through a growth spurt. My Mom thinks I'm actually going to be even bigger by the time I'm done growing."

"What brings you here? I thought you spent most of your time in that computer lab of yours."

"I needed your help with the inducer routings on a chronal damping modulator."

James' jaw dropped just slightly. That was one of the more esoteric systems on the _Trinity_. How did he know about that? Of course Wade was aware of the ship, but none of the data he had gleaned was ever put on the mainframe. It was too dangerous to have that sort of thing where hackers, even one as benevolent as his daughter's young friend.

"We need to talk in my lab" James said, leading him away from the crowded visitor's center.

"Now, just what is this about Wade? Why on Earth do you need something that is intended to keep a space craft in sync with normal time when it is traveling faster than light? Not to mention, how you know about the system."

"Oh, I've been talking to the AI on the _Trinity_ fairly regularly. I had a dedicated, shielded line tied directly to it."

"You had what?" Then what the young man said clicked "You had, as in past tense?"

"That's what I really needed to see you about. Yesterday morning the FBI showed up at my house with a warrant for all of my equipment. I'm effectively cut off from the rest of the world, Kim included."

That wasn't good. That meant Kim was not only on her own, she was effectively incommunicado. Most of the special features of her Kimmunicator would not work unless routed through the system. All the real computing power was located there, the hand held was only a remote receiver/sensor package.

"Hold the phone! Does that mean they can tie into the _Trinity'_s AI?"

"No. For security's sake I only created the link from scratch every time I connected to it. Without me, they can't do it, they won't even have any idea that I was doing it. I was excessively careful not to leave a trail on any of my hard drives."

James relaxed a bit. If anyone in the world knew how to do that, it would be Wade.

"Then why are you here?"

"I think the only way I can get back online is to access the AI directly. It uses a communication system that transmits through something called _Space Minus_. It's like the opposite of hyperspace. The upside is that nothing in this century can detect it, let alone intercept the signal. I'll be able to reactivate the Kimmunicator and the Feds won't even know I'm doing it."

"Then by all means, let's get to it!"

* * *

Frustration.

Neil knew how to summon his powers. All he had to do was concentrate.

The other James Neil Argus, the one from the other universe, the one who for some unimaginable reason went by "Jimmy" had shown him how to do it.

So far all he had been able to do was heal minor scratches and turn Shego's appearance back to normal.

He should be able to do so much more! His counterpart was able to heal massive wounds, to move objects with his will, to even rip apart the fabric of space and time. He was supposed to be the same person, the same soul repeated for this universe. He was supposed to have the same powers.

Jimmy had failed to mention it took thirty years for all those powers to develop!

He was trying to use a power called "tactile telekinesis." Somehow he was supposed to be able to affect an object by touching it. How was that supposed to work? If he had to actually touch something to make it move, what good was that? He was a big, strong man and if he could touch something, he should be able to move it with his muscles!

No, that wasn't helping anything. There wasn't anything he could touch, let alone move that would help him in his current situation. The chain had finally been lengthened, but only enough for him to lie down on his cot or go to the stainless steel privy. The electrodes were still stuck to his bare chest, though the wires had been detached. Disgustedly he started ripping them off, throwing them at the drain grate in the middle of the cell.

He looked at the heavy chain again. Strong as he was, he was still just a plain human being. There was no way he could break them. Not that he hadn't tried. His wrists were raw from straining against them, hoping against hope there was some weakness.

Giving up for the moment, he sat back down on the cot. At least his meager powers had some use. There wasn't any glow or other outward sign as he extended his will through his finger tips, but the pain and sting the ravaged skin beneath the locked manacles slowly changed, the open wounds closing, the skin turning from angry red to health pink once more.

There was something fascinating about doing this. He could actually sense the individual cells of his body. It was almost as if he understood how the molecules contained within those cells worked. Flesh lost cohesion and flowed, first repairing the damage, then returning to normal, scar tissue fading away until all that was left was plain healthy skin. He even caused his light colored arm hairs to return. It was amazing. He could even sense the cold steel of the shackles.

He could feel the inner workings of the lock!

Hesitantly, he pushed with his mind. Somehow he knew that one of the tumblers dropped into place! His mind raced. Lock picking was one of the skills he once practiced, yet here in his cell he lacked any of the tools he needed. They made sure of that. If he had even a pin he would have been out of them long ago!

The second tumbler popped into place.

His mind was now the pin. Slowly he worked his way around the mechanism. So this was tactile TK! He kept two fingers on the ring around his wrist, pushing just so on each tumbler.

The manacle popped open with an audible click!

He reached inside the empty pocket of his trunks. The liner was made of the same mesh that lined the inside. It wasn't much use to carry stuff around in, but he sometimes liked keeping his hands tucked in there. Now he grabbed the liner and ripped it straight out. With his teeth he tore it into smaller fragments, stuffing a tiny scrap into the workings of the clasp. He was then able to close it without the lock reconnecting.

His confidence growing, he set to work on his other wrist.

* * *

Michael was growing more and more agitated. Even Maria was now convinced Max and Liz had been taken. "Have you had any luck?"

Isabel just shook her head. Her own power was the ability to enter the dreams of another person. Usually, though, it only worked when her target was actually asleep. "I can't get anything from Max. That means he's either been taken too far away for it to work or…"

"Don't think like that." Kyle warned. "What about Liz?"

"I think I got a couple flashes from her. Somehow I think she's still in there." She pointed at the Space Center. They were in an abandoned storage building, using a small office on the second floor with windows facing the massive complex.

"That's good news, then." Maria said, hoping to calm them all down. "If something bad happened to Max, Liz would know. She always knows. Their souls are connected somehow. If they got to Max, then her feelings would have been a beacon, even in just short flashes."

"I hope you are right, Miss Deluca."

Everyone turned toward the new voice. Michaels' hand went up automatically, summoning a telekinetic blast.

"I wouldn't do that if I were you, Mr. Guerin. Or you, Mrs. Ramirez." The speaker turned to face Isabel, who had raised her own hand, though slower than Michael."

The woman was tall, almost stately. She was dressed in a crisp, dark blue uniform. Her neat, dark brown hair was parted to one side. Her most distinctive feature, however, was a black patch over one eye.

"I mean you no harm. In fact, I may be able to offer you the means to be rid of the Special Unit once and for all, allowing you to return to your former lives in Roswell."

"What? Who? How?" Michael stammered.

"Allow me to introduce myself. I am Doctor Director, the head of Global Justice and I intend to enlist your aid in bringing down the illegally formed Special Unit once and for all!"

* * *

Strike Force Agent Millard Bedarest was tired. Not so much physically. Work with the FBI was demanding, but nothing compared to the deserts of Iraq. Here there were no insurgents ready to deal death at every corner. Here most people who passed you on the street paid you no more attention than they did anyone else, with the possible exception of his stature.

No, he was getting tired of Tybor and the rest of the unit he had been assigned to. This wasn't what he thought he was trained for at Quantico. It rankled him to be going after someone like Kim Possible, somebody who had clearly saved the world on multiple occasions. His unit had taken on several of the Diablo bots that had been carried into the Middle East by soldiers, hoping to take them home to their children.

He had just finished chewing out one of his team members. It had technically been a good shoot. They were under attack and he acted within his training and within the rules of engagement. But he expected more from his men. There was no reason for the boy to be shot. They knew going in that the most dangerous one would be Shego. She was the real fugitive in the situation. It was clear that once they established who they were, someone as smart as Possible would have immediately surrendered. Sure, they had a warrant for her arrest, but she would know the best way to deal with it was to go through with it, to clear her name by the proper channels. Besides, it was looking more and more like her old nemesis was calling the shots and had even probably gained some sway over them. The end of the fight looked all the world like a kidnapping instead of an escape.

He was also starting to get a glimmer that something else was going on here. Something truly wrong.

He found himself in the cell block at the bottom of the hidden complex. Why had this been constructed? Prisoners were supposed to be handed over for proper trial, not kept in a secret base. He stopped in front of one cell. This particular prisoner had been subjected to some kind of tests. Tests? Heck, those weren't tests, those looked much more like torture.

He looked at the prisoner. The main was chained up like an animal. He had a haggard look to him, not being able to shave in days nor even take a bath. He was still clad in the long swimming trunks he had been wearing when they captured him. Now he was sleeping on the cot, his back turned to him, the chain draped across his waist.

Bedarest opened the cell door with his key card and stepped inside.

"Wake up, I need to ask you something."

* * *

****

**_Special thanks to the good folks who have been reviewing! I've now got up much better picture of Neil Argus on DeviantArt. You can access my page from my website (on my author page) and the pic is in "Scraps"_**


	11. Will You?  Reprise

Disclaimer: Kim Possible and related characters all belong to Disney. Max Evans and the other Roswellians belong to Twentieth Century Fox. All other characters not appearing in those works are the property of Intergalax dot com

_**Soulmates of the Fury**_

* * *

**Chapter 11: Will You?- _Reprise_**

* * *

"Well? Can I get an answer? Sometime this decade?"

"Neil! We need to focus here!" Shego yelled back at him as she roundhouse kicked a goon wearing an open front shirt with a huge butterfly collar and monstrous medallions on thick gold chains. His head snapped back and he fell backwards into another similarly clad goon.

"Oh, it's not like you're even working up a sweat!" Neil flipped a man dressed like the biker on the Village People over his shoulder.

"Hey, you try doing this with your powers shut off!" She screamed back at him while dodging a punch from her opponent.

With that, Neil tucked his hands behind his back and proceeded to block and kick the leather clad henchman using just his feet. "Look Ma! No Powers!" His voice dropped an octave "Never had 'em! Never will! HA HA HA!"

"Will the two of you shut up and do your jobs!" Hego growled as he threw a thug dressed in a powder blue polyester leisure suit onto the multi-colored glowing stage that dominated the center of the large room.

"Yeeeeesss Massster!" Neil said in his best 'Igor' voice.

"The head of Global Justice and I are going to have a long chat when this is over!"

"Ooooo, I'm quakin' in my combat boots!" Neil gasped in mock fear.

"Stupid little powerless wannabe little…" Hego muttered under his breath as he waded back into the fray.

"Um, hello, this was supposed to be my collar. This time you're the ones stepping on my territory!" Didn't matter, Hego was out of earshot again. "Still doesn't like me, does he Hon?"

"Nope!" Shego answered as she tumbled with another disco freak henchman.

The villain had taken to the platform again. If any of them had the time they probably would have fallen over laughing at the tall, thin man with dark, wavy hair, wearing a white suit and black shirt, collar open. He stuck a pose that could have come from a "Saturday Night Fever" movie poster except for the fact he had a huge, long neck totally out of proportion to the rest of his lanky body. That, and in his left hand was an evil looking ray gun.

"Pathetic. I thought Team Go was the best this pitiful city had to offer! It looks as if you've lost your ability to get down and boogie!"

Neil elbowed his goon in the gut, then brought his first up into his nose. "Uh, Dude! I don't think the Village Idiots here are winning."

"Fool! Soon all the world will bow before DISCO NECK TED!"

Shego stopped in mid punch, dropping her goon mercifully to the floor where he slinked away. She made a rude sound, then collapsed to her knees laughing. "Oh boy! You are kidding me, right? Disco Neck Ted? Come on, at least Aviarius makes some kind of sense! That's just…stupid!"

"Laugh now, pretty lady! Let's see how funny it is when your boyfriend's powers are DISCONNECTED by DISCO NECK TED!" with that he fired the beam weapon at Neil. A beam of soft blue light leapt from the projector, bathing him in its azure glow.

Neil looked like he was actually expecting that to happen, but he recovered quickly and dropped to his knees. "Oh no! What have you done! My powers! What will I do? I'll never be able to cook pasta au dente again!"

"Pasta?" Disco Neck Ted roared.

"Yeah, Dude! That _Metaform Power Inhibitor_ ray you stole only works on people with meta-human powers!" He stood back up and mimicked an air guitar. "and Dude! Don't you know…" He laughed as Hego grabbed him from behind, wrenching the weapon from his hands. "…Disco is dead, Rock Rules!"

"You little smart mouthed kid!" He raged as Hego put the cuffs on him. "That tired old phrase was around before you were even born!"

"Yeah, and Disco was already dead when they coined it!" came his ready retort.

Later, as Chicago's finest herded the rest of the disco themed henchmen out, Hego confronted Neil. "Just what gives you the right to go after this Disco Ted by yourself?"

"Uh, hello, Hego. Three seconds into the fight and he's zapped you and Sher's powers."

"Shego, Argus. In public she's always Shego." He said, pointing his finger dangerous at Neil.

"Whatever. I knew that weapon was perfectly harmless to normal people so I knew I could get in, recover it and get back out before any ruckus could break out."

"That's not what I saw when I got here!" he challenged.

"Doy! I'm doing what I do best, which is getting in and out without being seen, then the two of you come barging in here like you're the freaking cavalry!"

"Then all you would have done was recover the stolen technology. Now Disco Ted…"

"Disco _Neck_ Ted. Supposed to sound like _disconnected_."

"Whatever. You were only doing half the job."

"No, I was doing what I was asked to do. If you had just waited your turn, you could have gone in with the whole team and mopped him up without any muss or fuss. Now because you're supposed to be the great big shot in this town, I've nearly been exposed and the two of you will won't have your powers for four days to a week. Don't give me that look _Hego_! Being GJ's liaison officer is only one job. I've been doing this since I was twelve years old! That means I've been at this longer than you and your siblings have even had your powers. So don't lecture me on what may or may not be my job! I don't need special powers to do what I do!"

Hego glared at him a few moments more, then stalked off. It rattled the older man that he let his little sister's boyfriend make him lose control like that and it especially rattled him that this time, at least, he was right. He allowed himself a few more moments of muttering before putting on his "Hero Face" to meet the waiting press.

Shego put her hand on Neil's arm "Are you okay?"

"Yeah, fine. These guys were strictly low rent. Imagine, thinking that by taking all the superhero's powers away he'd be able to get away with anything he wanted to. He wasn't thinking that most folks don't have any powers to draw on."

"I really meant about Hego." She gently turned him to face her.

"Your brother is such an…I mean, Mego can be a bit of a self-centered jerk but Hego…I just don't get it."

"Honey, it's me. He's been in charge so long he thinks he has to protect all four of us. He thinks he is protecting me."

"From what? Am I such a bad guy? Is it so wrong that I'm some sort of half redneck half surfer dude punk?"

"No, Neil!" She smiled. "You're not a surfer dude! You don't even know how to surf!"

"Exactly."

"But seriously. I do have an answer for you."

"Really?"

She bowed her head, looking at the floor.

"It's no."

* * *

Kim and Shego were sitting in a waiting room in a one of the taller towers of Downtown Atlanta. They both felt one hundred percent better after an opportunity to clean up and put on some fresh clothing. They managed to knock a huge hole in their pooled cash, but if all went well here that would no longer be the greatest of their worries. 

That wasn't exactly true. Two men, one thin, wiry and blonde, the other thick, muscular and brown haired occupied their minds. Shego kept trying to convince Kim that the worst that would happen to the two men while they were in FBI custody was bad food and that Ron at least should be used to that considering the amount of mystery meat gravy he consumed during his high-school years.

Shego watched as Kim displayed a nervous habit she had never noticed before. She would constantly interlace her fingers, pushing her gloves further and further down on her fingers. Finally, she said "You know, you don't have to wear those right now, not if they're uncomfortable."

"I don't see you taking your gloves off."

"Princess, it's a little hard to keep makeup on your hands." She said, pointing at her nearly normal features."

"I don't know what's worse, your green skin showing or you walking around in one-hundred degree weather wearing long sleeves and gloves."

"Catch twenty two, there Kimmie. It is a little easier to play off the clothes than looking like the spokesperson for Spearmint Plus chewing gum."

That earned her a slight chuckle from the redhead.

"Take off your gloves there for a minute. It's not like you'll be out of uniform or something."

Kim shrugged, biting back the thought that it would be just exactly that – being out of uniform. She pealed off the gloves, careful to keep them from turning inside out. "Okay, what?"

Shego reached for Kim's left hand, pulling it closer to her eyes. "Oh, heh. Not quite what I thought it was."

"What? My ring?"

"Yeah. I thought maybe Stoppable had gone and proposed to you already. Guess not."

"What do you mean, guess not? Because of my ring?"

"Yep. That's one of those cheap 'Promise' rings, the kind kids buy when they want to pretend they're getting engaged."

"What!"

"Wait a minute. Oh, come on, you mean to tell me he actually proposed to you? With that little thing?"

Kim glanced around, as if she was worried who would hear her. "This is all Ron could afford."

"Princess, gimme a break. We're talking multi-millionaire Ron Stoppable, the Naco King. He's bought gems a thousand times bigger than that, and you're going to let him call that an engagement ring?"

"Well, for one thing, he does have money. Not as much as that first check from Bueno Nacho, which, by the way, you and you-know-who had plenty to do with relieving him of, but he's got a pretty good chunk put away. Problem is, his father put it into a trust he can't touch until he's twenty one. So, there's another reason to wait to get married."

"So it's still a promise ring." Shego quipped, grinning.

"No. He actually proposed and I accepted. Just because he doesn't have tons of money yet doesn't mean we don't love each other."

"Not what I meant, Punkin. That ring is a promise to you that he's going to buy you a proper one later on."

"Of course. That will be the wedding set. But this will always be our engagement ring."

"Whatever." She sat back in her seat, a smug look crossing her powdered and pancaked features.

Kim wasn't sure how much she should tell this woman. Ron and her had talked into the night. Her answer was an unqualified yes but both of them realized there was no rush to the alter. Ron suggested and she agreed that the best time would certainly be after college. It wasn't like there was anything to prove and there was still the fact she wanted Ron to ask her again in front of her parents. She could be a strong, modern woman any day of the week, but she had an old fashioned streak in her that said her fiancé was going to ask her father's permission and then put the ring officially on her finger down on one knee.

"Neil proposed to me once." Shego said, almost absently.

"And?" Kim prompted.

"And? And nothing. I turned him down."

"What on Earth for? I thought the two of you were such an item before…"

"It's okay, Princess, you can spit it out. Before I turned evil. You're not sparing anyone's feelings here."

"Well, before you turned evil then. It just sounds so, weird just to say it that way."

"Not weird. Just the truth. Anyway, we weren't quite eighteen then. It was one thing to have a boyfriend like him, but I just wasn't ready to even consider a decision about the rest of my life."

"Just last night you were telling me that I shouldn't be waiting with Ron."

"That's different. I was telling you, well, mostly that you shouldn't be waiting to fool around with him. No, you two are way different than Neil and me. We were just a normal high-school couple."

"Normal?"

"Well, our relationship was normal. Nothing as big or deep as you have with the buf…. With Ron. You know, the holding hands, the kissing, occasionally um, you know. The fun of watching him contemplating beating the stuffing out of Hego."

"Say what? Hego would have wiped the floor with him, fighting skills or no."

"Oh, no debate there. He just contemplated it. Wishful thinking and all. Whatever. So he up and pulls out this ring which I have no idea how he ever paid for and goes down on one knee and proposes. I almost said yes but I ended up stringing him along for a few days. Finally I got my head together and told him I wouldn't marry him, at least not then."

"Ouch."

"Yeah, ouch. I thought I got it through his thick skull that I just wasn't agreeing then, that I still wanted him to be my boyfriend and all but the next thing I knew his little apartment was cleaned out and he was nowhere to be found. Even his handlers at GJ were stumped until I called his father Nikolas. He was back in North Carolina finishing up his high school and getting ready to go to the university there in his home town."

"He up and quit because you wouldn't marry him?"

"Yep. He thought I meant we'd never get married ever. The next time I saw him was when my brothers were forced to come after me…and we know how that ended."

_Was that part of the equation_? Kim thought. Was Neil leaving with a broken heart part of the reason Shego's life too the turn it did? Of course that could never excuse what she had done, but it went some distance in explaining it. Sensing she was about to send her old enemy into tears again she decided to change the subject.

"So why are we at 'The Atlanta Senior Center' anyway? I don't see any senior citizens in here."

Shego grinned again, putting her melancholy memories away for the time being. "Boy, being with Slinkable…"

"Shego!"

"Okay, another lame one, sorry. He's starting to rub off on you. Think, sweetness…Senior!"

"You have got to be joking! We're going to Señor Senior Sr. for help?"

"Close. This isn't a retirement home, it's the corporate offices of a shipping company. We're here to see Old Señor Senior's younger half-brother, Able Senior. He had his tongue firmly planted in his cheek when he named this place."

"Half brother? How come I've never heard of him?"

"Why should you have? He's totally legit. He's also nowhere near as loaded as big bro. Don't get me wrong, he's got plenty of Benjamins sitting in the bank, it's just a lot more likely to refer to his billion instead of billions."

"Lovely. So if he's so legit, how come you know him?"

"Let's just say he'd got a son too."

"Just guessing here. Another Junior?"

"Yes and no. He's Able Senior Junior, but since he was born in the US, he's never been called Señor. For that matter, you don't call his Dad that either. He's lived here over fifty years."

"Mister Senior, huh? Sounds awk-weird after saying three Seniors all this time. So, another boyfriend?"

"He wishes. Think the usual Junior, but just a little less bulk and a heck of a lot more brains."

Kim's eyebrows went up. Junior may have been a couple oars short of a rowboat but he was certainly good eye candy. She tried to imagine this 'Able' the younger as a pretty young assistant emerged from the offices and called for them. She shut the doors behind them as they entered, leaving them alone in the large, empty ante-room.

The lights went out except for a single, bright spotlight on the two young women. A very familiar, though slightly different voice boomed over loudspeakers.

"So, my older brother's feisty young nemesis has come for me at last! Now it is time to show you how we treat with the likes of you! It is time for you to get what you deserve for the indignities you have heaped upon him!"

Kim dropped into her fighting crouch, pulling her gloves on once more. "Bring it!" she said through clenched teeth.

* * *

Neil rolled onto his back, looking at his visitor but not speaking. Where had he seen that face before? 

"Why did you help that prisoner break out of here?"

He again eyed the tall agent warily, but something in his question piqued his interest. "You are the first person here I've heard call her that."

"Come again?"

"You just referred to her as a prisoner. That at least denotes a human being. Tybor and Oray just called her a thing, or property."

"That's ridiculous. We've got very specific laws about how we're supposed to treat prisoners."

"Oh, really. So how do you explain this?" he held up a manacled hand.

"That was because you had to be restrained. You put two of my men in the infirmary."

"I weep."

"Whatever. Just answer the question. Why does a bike mechanic from a quiet beach community just up and decide to break into a facility that's a closely guarded secret, then proceed to remove a prisoner? Then, finally, turn around and deliver her to an equally secret Global Justice facility?"

Huh? They knew where he took the girl? How did that happen? It wouldn't have been a big surprise if they knew he drove her to Charleston, though he would still liked to know precisely how they tracked him.

"Dude, what makes you think that was me?" Neil found himself amping up his normal southern accent in response to the fed's similar speech patterns.

"Give me a break, Argus. We've got you on video."

"Oh, you've got surveillance in all the cells?"

"What do you think?"

"Well, maybe I just didn't like the way she was being treated. Since when do we shove a prisoner who doesn't appear violent and even seems to be malnourished into a cell alone with no privy, no food or water and proceed to treat her like she's nothing more than a piece of equipment that has been forgotten?"

"I don't know. I never saw that prisoner. Just you and that other guy."

Other guy? That was the first he had heard of other prisoners. Was that Ron? Had any of his guests been taken? Fresh worry bloomed in his head about his friends and especially about Shego.

He hadn't said it aloud but he knew every time he looked at her that he still loved her. Despite all she had done to him, to others, heck, the whole world. All of that melted away when he looked in her eyes, whether they were bright emerald green or their natural brown. He knew they had touched each other's soul and he was prepared to do whatever she needed, no matter the cost. Not what she wanted, but what she needed.

He pretty much figured that if they got out of this he was probably going to prison for a long time for harboring her.

"Look, I don't know what's for what with this girl. All I know is they've got you properly secured and the boy isn't going anywhere with his injuries."

"Injuries? Just who are we talking about here?"

"You know him. He was in your house, along with that convicted felon you were shacked up with."

"Okay, Ron. What injuries? Is he okay?"

"He's going to be fine. He got shot in the shoulder when we captured him. The Doctor took the bullet out and he'll be okay. He's in some pain since we didn't want to completely dope him up."

"Good for you."

"Come again?"

Neil didn't reply. Instead he came up off the bed almost faster than Bedarest could follow. The tall ex-sergeant barely registered the fact that all four manacles had popped open at once as his attacker plowed into him. Surprise or no, he still had to cross the entirety of the cell to reach him. He had the choice of jumping for the door or meeting him head on. He chose the latter.

That's what saved Neil from being locked back inside. Millard Bedarest was too close to the door and all he had to do was back out of it and the acrylic barrier would snap back into place. Instead he chose to block the attack, thinking he could subdue the prisoner.

The agent was fast, he had to give him credit. Most other opponents would have been too rattled by his sudden escape from the chains. Too much time spent relying on those reflexes to keep him alive made the fight all that more difficult. Still, he had to take him down before he could reach the door or sound an alarm.

He feinted right, then dropped to the floor, sending one leg between the agents, the other to the side, scissoring both legs, hoping to topple him to the floor. It almost worked but he was heavier than he looked. There was dense muscle on his tall frame.

Taking advantage of his compromised stance, Neil tucked and rolled into his legs, finally knocking him to the floor. They tangled on the concrete, Neil finally getting the taller man into a sleeper hold.

"You know, I just realized who you are. Good thing too, since you seem a bit more decent than the rest of the folks down here. In another life, you and I would have been best friends, so I apologize in advance for this…"

He applied just the right pressure in just the right place. Bedarest gasped as the air rushed out of his lungs involuntarily. In moments, he was out cold.

Neil stripped off his sidearm, pulling the Beretta from it's krydex holster. Deliberately he dropped the magazine, stripping all the rounds from inside. Then he racked the slide, ejecting the round left in the weapon. Lastly, he stripped the slide right off the top, removing the internal mechanism. He left the whole affair, pistol belt included, in a pile. Then he found the man's backup weapon and did the same thing, again leaving it in an obvious pile. Finally, he pulled the man over to the cot and started stripping his black Nomex jump suit. "Sorry, hate to leave you here in your tidy whiteys, but I'm about tired of running around in these trunks." He had to roll the sleeves and the cuffs, but otherwise it was a pretty close fit.

Okay, key card, ID bar code. Keys, he's got a few keys. Might just be for his personal vehicle or for some motor pool van his team uses. Can't tell. A few of these are door keys, but when I was here before almost every lock was operated with the key cards. At a few junctions, thick acrylic doors blocked access with some kind of palm-print reader. Crude stuff, basically made to see if the person entering had a proper bone structure. Sloppy, there are better ways of locking people out. Retina scans, breath composition readers, good old fashioned brass keys, but why scan for bone composition?

That didn't matter. Now his mission was to find Ron and learn what had happened to Kim and Shego!

* * *

Wade was surprised and pleased with his new assistant. She acted defensive when he first climbed the ramp into the _Trinity_, but once Doctor Possible had introduced him she was almost ecstatic. Of course, he didn't know who she was at first, but once she told him what her IRC name was he realized he was talking to an old friend, for the first time face to face. 

They were busy now, but he would some time have to ask why such a petite, sweet natured woman chose the name "Killercat."

"Okay, Wade, I've got the code entered into the mainframe. The AI has already digested the whole thing."

"Good. A few more adjustments and we should be able to get in touch with the Kimmunicator."

"Wow, who would have ever thought I was helping _the_ Kim Possible with a mission." Liz beamed.

"If all goes well, maybe you'll be part of that mission too."

"So what are you doing now? I thought this computer was so hyper-advanced?"

"It is, but without sounding like I'm bragging, so is my work. The built in protection in the Kimmunicator itself isn't going to like being talked to be a foreign system, even one as advanced as this one. I have to make sure the handshake protocols will get through without triggering a shutdown. I also have to be careful about the signal."

"I thought the signal couldn't be detected."

"Not out outgoing signal, but when the Kimmunicator responds, it's going to be in a bandwidth that can be detected by somebody with the right equipment. I've got to make sure when it responds back to me that the signal is properly scrambled. This is especially important since the Feds have my whole system. I don't think they know how to assemble it correctly and they don't have the access codes to make it work without me sitting there, but I don't want to take that chance."

"Sounds good."

"So you got all that."

"Hey, I may not be in the same league as you, but I'm no slouch when it comes to computers." Liz smiled again.

"I can see that. I'm glad the bragging you did in the chat channel was earned."

"It's not bragging when you can do it."

"True. Well, here goes. Cross your fingers and toes." Wade squinted, leaned into the keyboard and started typing the commands.

He hoped the thing wouldn't go off at a ferociously bad time!


	12. What the Soul May Know

_**Soulmates of the Fury

* * *

**_**Chapter 12: What the Soul May Know

* * *

**

Doctor Oray pulled his glasses off and squinted at the results. He shouldn't have been seeing this!

There were three blood filled vials on the work table, each separated by at least twenty inches. Hand written labels identified the donor for each sample. The nearest was marked J. N. Argus and he had expected to see some interesting results from that blood.

It was the sample marked R. Stoppable that captured his attention!

The tests he was running on the blood samples were what would normally be expected from a run of the mill medical doctor. They might even surprise most medical researchers, considering they didn't rely on what was normally considered science on twenty first century Earth.

Wouldn't that zealot Starler be surprised to learn that Doctor Arthur Oray was not just a respected researcher but that he had been born almost eleven hundred years ago…

…and not on Earth!

His real name, Gahinian, was known to very few, including most of those who would have considered themselves close to the venerable wizard. His full name, Gahinian Oray, had not been spoken for more than two hundred years, as he knew it. That had been the day he was raised from and _Acera_, or learner to _Arcus_, a title meaning at the same time master, teacher and elder mage. He was learned in both the older magicks his world as well as the more profound energies that flowed from the ascended beings known collectively as the _Effurien_ or, more prosaically, the Fury.

He had been watching young Neil Argus since his return from Go City. All of the signs pointed to him as the nascent _Wisdom of the Effurien_ though he was far from gaining the absolute proof. If he was indeed the cornerstone of the Trinity, he would be there to help guide him.

The business with the Royal Four of Antar was something unexpected. Oray had learned of that ancient planet during his travels through time. They were mortals like all other living beings, but they were unlike most other life forms. Their planet was different, the skies red, the waters, if they could be called water, thicker, heavier than what the humans would think of. Others could not live on that planet and Antarians could not live on other planets without special survival suits called 'skins' or by extreme genetic modification.

A revolutionary cum despot named Kivar had the young king, Xan, his wife Ava, his sister Velondra and her betrothed Rath killed in his bid for supreme power. Somehow, that had not been the end, for their families were able to capture their essences. They blended the captive souls with DNA harvested from a planet where they thought they would be able to hide them until they once again came of age.

It hadn't gone exactly as planned. In creating human/alien hybrids with the Royal Four's essences, they had created four new individuals, with their own identities, own thoughts, own dreams. Their original memories remained buried and they forged ahead, creating their own destinies.

Somewhere along the lines those destinies took unexpected turns. Even though there were two sets of hybrids, only one set was considered primary. The true essences would only be transferred to the "Backups" if one were killed. The surprise they had learned when the secondary Ava was captured that this had not actually happened. Something went wrong and the essence was diverted to another.

When the Special Unit had first set their sights on Max Evans and his companions, they had mistaken Elizabeth Parker for one of the aliens. She had been displaying alien powers, but it was soon clear that she was a human. One who, at some point, had become romantically involved with Max, to the exclusion of his intended wife. Oray had a theory why the second Ava didn't have the essence.

Parker had it! That meant she had become soul-merged with Evans. He fully understood the significance of Soulmates in the Trinity!

How Starler divined this, Oray had no clue. The man seemed to have only one objective, the capture of the four, Parker included whether she was alien or human. The agent did other strange things from time to time he had no time to investigate that. The FBI and the Special Unit were a means to an end. The old wizard had his own reasons for finding the Royal Four. He knew the old scrolls, he had studied in fact from the Book of Arkon itself. It didn't mention the royal family of Antar by name, but the clues he found there and in other tomes led him to one conclusion…

…The Royal Four would lead to the rise of the Trinity!

Still, he had no way of knowing exactly how that would come about.

One think he did know – most of what was considered science by the greater part of humanity could not detect _anything_ about the Trinity. That meant that everything he had learned as a Terran doctor was utterly useless. It was his more arcane knowledge that may lead to the answers he needed.

It was simpler even than that. When the vial containing Max Evans' blood was placed near Neil Argus' he could detect an aura around both samples. When they were alone he could not. There indeed _was_ a connection! Argus was the first member of the Trinity!

Putting Stoppable's sample with Evans' was an accident, once that caused his jaw to almost hit the table. This was what was not yet supposed to have happened! The sample had an aura! To his mystically enhanced senses it was as clear as day. His eyes alone could see the bright blue halo around the vial!

He quickly set about putting the sample to every test he could devise. Just like with Argus' there was nothing else he could tell. His mind worked feverishly trying to figure out just what he had learned today. Was Stoppable the second corner of the Trinity? Perhaps his excitement was the reason he made the mistake.

Agent Starler was standing in the doorway of the lab, a smug look on his face. "_Ben corba den tenve noh yetnu…"_

"…_Tredo del Kiresmek ban Effurien de'l tengye ert Podondrin_" Oray responded automatically, completing the phrase from the preamble of the _Book of Arkon_. _At the Dawn of the Darkness, we will see the return of theKnights of the Ascended to purify the Master_. It was the divine prophecy and a phrase used among the devout of the Effurien.

It was a phrase that only a native Arkonian would know!

* * *

"I thought you said this guy was legit." Kim growled at Shego as the room filled with tall, broad shouldered men in crisp, professional business suits.

"I guess it pays not to underestimate who you might have hacked off there, Princess." Shego was standing ready, but had not dropped into a fighting crouch like Kim, nor had she flared up her fists.

A set of double doors in the center of the far wall opened and a man who might have been a twin of Señor Senior Sr. in his younger days strode into the room. His hair was jet black where his older sibling's had turned iron gray and white. He also stood a bit straighter. There was little doubt the two men were related.

"My dear Miss Possible!" He began cheerfully. He sounded much like his brother, though the years spent in the United States diluted his Spanish accent to a great degree. "Have you any idea how much trouble and heartache you have caused my dear brother?"

"Nothing that wasn't coming to him." Kim was aware that two of the suited men were circling behind them. "If he hadn't taken up villainy I would never have darkened his doorstep."

"Oh, of that I am certain."

"Then why are you doing this? Shego said you were an honest businessman."

"I am, my dear, I am. However, there is business and there is family and this most definitely is the latter. Your dealing with my elder brother beg the appropriate response. Wouldn't you agree, Theodore?" He turned to his inordinately tall assistant.

"Yes indeed Mister Senior."

Shego's eyes went wide as she placed the voice with the face and body. "Disco Neck Ted?"

He grinned at her almost maliciously. "Why Miss Shego! I'm so glad you finally realized who I am. I was afraid you had forgotten me."

"Did you just call him _disconnected_?" Kim asked with a confused expression on her face.

"Disco Neck Ted. He's a wannabe villain Team Go tangled with who likes to have his goons dress up like extras from a bad seventies disco movie. He had this silly notion that he could take over Go City and maybe even the world by taking away all the superheroes' powers."

"Ewww, Disco. That's not just last season, that is so last century."

"Oh, please Look who's talking here! An ex-superhero turned criminal who looks like she's dressed up for a Johnny Cash convention and In-The-Army-Now Barbie!"

"Enough!" Able Senior barked. "What ever nefarious activities Theodore has been involved in, that is the past. We must now attend to the matters at hand." He clapped his hands twice.

The main lights snapped on ant it became obvious the men had not been standing idle. Two of them carried an elegantly inlaid table and placed it in front of the women. The two who had slipped behind them were holding chairs ready for them. Other assistants brought forth a seat for their employer, who remained standing for the moment.

"Ladies, please have a seat. Can I offer you anything to drink, perhaps a diet cola for you, Miss Possible?"

"Um, sure." Kim answered warily. "I'm confused. I thought you were going to take me on for what I've done to your brother."

"What? Did you think I was going to have my men attack you? Heaven's no. You said yourself, I am a legitimate businessman. I could ill afford to attack one so esteemed as yourself. No, I am here to praise you for your handling of Esteban."

"To…praise?"

"Why of course. You see, Miss Possible, when it comes to families with this kind of wealth there is, shall we say, a certain enmity."

"But, uh, well, when your men came in it looked just like you were having us surrounded by your henchmen."

"Ah, then my little joke was a good one, No? The look on your face was, shall we say, priceless."

"Yeah, we're just bustin' a gut over here Able." Shego half snarled.

"So, what can I do for you beautiful young ladies?" He finally sat down at his place across the table from them.

* * *

Tim soldered the last component in place and Jim secured the access panel. The Kimminator Mark 1 was ready for its maiden flight. It wasn't as polished as their usual work, but it was by far the most advanced to date. It was built in a hurry, using the hull of the original Jimminator/Timinator (they finally settled on naming their rockets after Kim when they couldn't agree which one of their names to use!) and the drive unit from one of those weird jet packs that had been left by a certain group of visitors the previous summer.

The test pilot stood at ready. He pulled on a set of goggles and let them snap into place over his eyes. He then added a jaunty flyer's scarf over his leather bomber jacket. Finally he added the last, a helmet that would allow him to tie into the onboard communications system. Everything checked ready, so he climbed into the cockpit, Tim closing it and checking the seal.

"Open launch bay doors." Jim said.

Tim hit the button. The garage door slowly lifted. "Launch bay doors open." Tim reported.

"Begin ignition sequence."

Yellow light burst forth from the tail as the compact ion drive flared to life.

"We have ignition."

"Power levels at optimum!"

"Launch is a go. I repeat, launch is a go!"

"We have liftoff!" the twins screamed as a three foot long ion powered rocket plane lifted into the air, carrying its pilot on a course eastward, following the carrier signal of Ron Stoppable's Kimmunicator.

* * *

Max Evans drifted on the edge of consciousness. It seemed he had been here before. Time and time again he would seem to almost wake up, then would be cast back into the abyss. He waited helplessly for the inevitable, knowing he had no power over it.

Power.

He was just coherent enough to summon his healing powers. He directed them inwards, chasing away the last vestiges of the drug they had been using to keep him unconscious. His sharp mind guessed what had been happening. They knew about his powers and they knew it would be difficult to hold him prisoner without keeping him under. It was disheartening to know how much they had learned about his abilities, but it also gave him a surge of hope that they had not disposed of him outright. In all the time they had been fleeing these people, they had assumed they wanted them dead. They had, after all, tried to assassinate them at their high school graduation.

Glancing around, he studied his surroundings. He was in what looked like a cell save the clear door. Instead of a cot he was strapped to a slanted table of some sort. Forcing himself to relax, he concentrated first on the restraints holding his wrists. The straps would not budge. _Think, Max! _The straps were leather! He couldn't affect organics! He was held fast unless he could direct his power to the table itself. Try as he might, he just couldn't.

Wait! The buckle! Concentrating once more, he could sense the pin in the center of the buckle, holding the restraints closed. With just a surge of his molecular powers he parted the pin. The strap slipped loose from the buckle, freeing his right hand. That done, it was simplicity to get the rest of the straps loose. Finally he sat back on the table and caught his breath.

How long had he been there? He certainly felt weak, healing powers or no. That meant he must have been held there for at least a couple days. The emptiness in his stomach and the fullness in another area told that tale as well.

Once enough fatigue had fled his muscles he got up and examined the door. Extending his power he felt around, trying to divine where the locking mechanism was. Unfortunately it must have been to far out of reach to cause it to pop open. That left the door itself. It appeared to be made of acrylic and despite being over an inch thick, he was confident he could cut through it, though it was somewhat denser than sheetrock!

He started at the bottom, his hand glowing red, accentuating the bone and muscle structure inside as his powers flared. This was not a power bestowed by his Antarian heritage, but a power that all humans might one day develop. The creators of his human form had taken advantage of the powers that lay dormant. Combined with the powers his birthright bestowed, it made him a quite formidable leader, even if he was only leading a group of five teenagers and one twenty year old. (Okay, that's just unfair, he thought for the millionth time. He emerged from the pod the same day as his sister, why did their adoptive parents make her a year older than him?)

Something was wrong.

There should have been a quarter inch gap where his hand had passed. Instead, the clear barrier was untouched. Of course! They were aware of his powers and had taken steps to prevent his escape using them. The minor victory with the restraints was washed away by concentration on finding another way out of this. Defeated for the moment, he once again sat down on the table.

He also had a severe craving for a Naco drenched in Tabasco sauce.

* * *

Neil had a vague idea about the layout of the base. How the diagram had come to be in Global Justice's possession he would have liked to have known but hey! No looking a gift horse in the mouth! _Then again, that would be bad advice for the Trojans! Arrrgh! This is NOT the time for Greek-School flashbacks!_

For someone in his former occupation, a photographic memory was a godsend. All of the exits he could think of were covered by guards. He knew that he had to get out quickly before they discovered Agent Bedarest and raised the alarm. There were relatively few visitors down there, but eventually somebody would be charged with bringing him a meal or that blasted, so-called doctor would be back to run more tests on him. At least he got most of the electrodes off his body. Now if that stupid ring would come off. Who in the world used a ring as an electrode anyway? Didn't those oxygen sensors just clamp on the end of your finger?

It slowly dawned on him that he was now 'off the map', so to speak. The concrete walls were newer looking, so it must have been a recent expansion. Even here the swampy muck was slowly seeping in, giving it a dank, dismal, humid feel. The room was a garage of some sort, with a ramp leading into a tunnel that curved off into darkness.

There were several vehicles scattered about. Black SUVs dominated the collection, with a pair of four-wheeled off-road vehicles that closely resembled the 'Crazyhopper' Jimmy Argus' friends had used. They were larger, with roll-bars protecting the single seat driver's position, with a gimbol mounted gun of some sort on top.

Nearest the ramp was a vehicle that stood out from the rest, both in style and color. It was a bright silver PT Cruiser. _Could it be_? The car Kim had parked at his house was dark maroon, but he was fully aware the of the properties the skin of his hidden starship had. It wasn't a big leap to think that Wade might have been able to duplicate the special paint. Once he looked inside, he was convinced!

There was a Bueno Nacho bag in the back seat being used as a garbage bag. It was stuffed full of Naco wrappers!

He tried the door, but it was locked and he knew way better than to try and pick it. If Wade had installed a mutable color paint system he certainly would have included some significant security features. Then it occurred to him. Maybe Bedarest had brought the car back in himself! He reached into the slash pocket and brought out the wad of keys there. Aha! One set had a complicated looking key with a winged Chrysler emblem on it. The key also had a plastic representation of a Naco on a short chain. These were Ron's keys, alright!

The door answered to the electronic chip on the key, popping open silently. There was a low thrum as something in the vehicle powered up. Knowing Kim's insistence on being a friend to the environment, he assumed the thing ran on a small cold-fusion generator of some sort instead of a simple combustion engine. He was amazed she hadn't ripped into him about his Explorer and it's hefty appetite for gasoline!

He slid into the driver's seat and inserted the key in the dash. A louder, deeper thrum filled the garage as internal mechanisms simulated the sounds of a normal engine. He wished there was some way to silence the fake noise, but was far more worried about other defenses, considering he wasn't the intended driver.

Beep!

Time slowed from the first beep. It was an ability that had saved him many times in the past.

Beep!

He reached for the door handle, ready to roll out before the car could do anything to him, hoping the door mechanism had not been disabled.

De!

That sounded familiar!

Beep!

What the?

Beep-Beep-De-Beep!

Neil flushed a bit in embarrassment and relief as he identified the source of the annoying ring-tone. A royal blue Kimmunicator was sitting on the passenger side floor. He picked it up and pressed the answer key.

"Uh, hello?"

"Neil? Is that you?" Wade asked, perplexed why the older man was answering Ron's device.

He was about to answer the dark skinned teen when he recognized the sound of gunshots from somewhere else in the base.

* * *

Special Agent Yasmine Reth had no true confidence in the ability of her hand-held communicator to keep her conversation truly secure, but she had little choice. She had to report in. Biting her lip, she keyed a sequence that would bypass Starler's main system, supposedly without detection. She waited a few tense minutes before a the tanned features of he contact appeared on its screen.

"Have you got anything new to report?" Wil Du asked after confirming the line on his end was secure.

"We have one of the Antarians in custody here, as well as Kim Possible's sidekick."

"Is Neil Argus still there?"

"Yes, though he is in pretty much direct control of Doctor Oray right now."

"Make sure no harm comes to any of them. We may have something in the works to help free Max Evans. For the time being, do nothing that may endanger your cover."

"What about Starler. My cooperation here was based on keeping tabs on him. This just might force him out into the open."

"I am aware of this, but matters of our national security come first. Perhaps it would be better for your cause if he were taken out of the picture anyway."

"That's not up for me to decide. I would have to consult my superiors back home to take such an action."

"As I said, it may be out of your hands. Do what you must to protect those three, for as long as you can."

"I'll do that. Just remember, if I'm exposed there won't be any going back home until the overlord Podondrin is deposed. I will be forced into permanent exile."

"Understood. GJ out." The screen winked off.

Her swirling thoughts were interrupted by the sound of gunfire!

* * *

_For something a little lighter, I've written a one-shot of Kim and Ron on the first day of their vacation titled "Motor Court Blues" - check it out, it's just some nice fluff!_


	13. Come Together!

**_Soulmates of the Fury_**

* * *

**Chapter 13: Come Together**

* * *

Neil ran frantically down the corridors of the hidden base. He had little hope any of the personnel would mistake him for one of them. His hair was far too long and he was well past desperately needing a shave. That worried him because he knew the majority of the agents and strike team members here were simply there because they had been assigned to the Special Unit. They were just doing their jobs and following orders they probably had no idea were illegal. It was the central core of the Unit who were breaking the law. He regretted hurting those men, but it had been the only reaction he could muster after reviving from the drugs they used.

He felt like a fool. Here he had been trying to escape where there were other prisoners he needed to take care of. He had heard from his captors about Ron but somehow he took it to mean he wasn't being held here at this facility. It should have hit him over the head when he found Kim's car!

"I still haven't been able to get in touch with Kim." Wade said moments ago on the Kimmunicator. "That's when I decided to take a chance on Ron's, even though I learned from the FBI mainframe that he was in custody."

"Where are they holding him." Neil said, his mind switching gears from escape mode to rescue mode.

"He's not in any kind of official holding area, at least according to the more open FBI files, but I'm assuming they would have taken him there if they took the car there. They got it the same time he was captured. Neil, there was a medical report along with his arrest; it says he is being treated for a gunshot wound!"

"Crap, that can mean much or little. No telling how bad he is, though it does sound like he's in good enough shape they didn't take him straight to a hospital. That also explains why I didn't see him down in the holding cells. He's probably in the infirmary or something. Have you still got him micro chipped?"

"I do, but I haven't calibrated the sensors to scan for it yet. I've been concentrating on restoring communications."

"Calibrating sensors? What happened?"

"When all this went down, they seemed to switch targets. They accused Kim of trying to help Shego avoid capture. Somehow they got a warrant and confiscated my whole system at home, so I had to find another terminal with enough processing power to act as a substitute."

"And that is?"

"Your ship."

"Lovely. Well, I have a pretty good idea where the infirmary is. I'll try that first."

That's when he heard the gunshots. A worst-case scenario sprang to life in his mind. Ron had somehow effected his own escape and they were shooting at him. Neil respected the younger man's growing skills, but he was not accustomed to going up against such heavily armed enemies.

He had to admit, he couldn't even be sure where the shots had come from, so he had to head for where he thought the infirmary was supposed to be. "Wade, call me, beep me, whatever." He pressed a button, switching the unit to silent mode and shoved it into a slash pocket as he ran out of the garage.

* * *

"Now let me get this straight," Michael said as he faced down Doctor Betty Director. "You have know for the last several years there was a unit in the FBI that was operating illegally and you did nothing about it?"

"Mister Guerin, our resources are severely limited so we have to direct out attention to matters that demonstrate a clear and present danger to the world as a whole. The 'Special Unit" did not do so until Special Agent Starler gained control over it. Before that it was simply not within the jurisdiction provided in our charter."

"I think trying to assassinate four innocent people at a high school graduation ceremony demonstrates a pretty clear danger." Isabel broke in.

"We were not aware of those events until much later. At the time we were still dealing with the aftermath of Doctor Drakken's Little Diablo attack. Now we have information that Starler is using the unit to work toward his own ends and may pose a significant immediate threat to world security. Tell me, would you find it terribly ironic that we suspect he might not have even been born on Earth?"

"You mean he's not human?" Kyle asked. Both he and Maria were still dressed in their street clothes instead of the dark, tight fitting jumpsuits Michael and Isabel had been fitted with.

"No, we believe he is human, but from another planet populated by humans."

"That doesn't make a bit of sense." Maria interjected petulantly.

"We don't understand that fact either, but that is what our insider has told us. Whether these extra-terrestrial humans are the result of parallel evolution of transplantation is beside the point."

"Then why do you need us?" Michael asked.

"Because of your unique gifts. Because they have captured one of your own. Because they have managed to take some of our best operatives off the board..."

"If I may be so frank, because you don't want to be officially associated with this operation. That's why you've tried to rely on this Kim Possible person and this other guy who got himself captured." Isabel interrupted angrily.

"May I speak?" the young, severe Asian man piloting the hover jet asked.

"Always, Agent Du." Director replied.

"Mrs. Ramirez…Isabel is correct. If we had relied on properly trained and equipped professionals we would not be resorting to sending in even more…amateurs."

"So noted Will. I will point out the many other times you have raised that objection, only to have your assignments completed by those same 'amateurs.' So, Mister Guerin, Mrs. Ramirez, are you in or out?"

"If it means getting Max and Liz out of these freak's hands and maybe getting them off our backs for good, I'm in." Michael said.

"But what about afterwards? We do this with Global Justice and we're virtually admitting we're aliens." Isabel said.

"Really?" Doctor Director asked. "Just what makes the three of you aliens?"

The four of them were momentarily stunned by the question.

"From what you have told us and what we have learned otherwise, you emerged from your gestation pods in a cave near Roswell, New Mexico. In my book that means you were born there, making you all native born American citizens and are entitled do all the rights and protections that go along with that. Your pedigree, being so-called alien/human hybrids is irrelevant."

"So you don't think we're this big threat to national security?"

"If I did, you wouldn't be here right now. I just think you're a bunch of kids who would like nothing better than to be left alone."

"You got that right." Michael said.

* * *

As his mind drifted from hazy coherence to painful clarity, a real sense of fear was growing. Ron had been hurt in the past, all the more so as his skills improved and he came to the forefront on their missions. _This would be a really good time for the old Mystical Monkey Power to fire up_, he thought. Kind of hard to imagine using a physical fighting power like that when even twitching makes your shoulder feel like a piece of rebar has been shoved through it. Why was the medicine that Doctor Oray shot him with making him so woozy? Ron knew of plenty of medications that would help him manage the pain but still allow him to mostly function awake.

The pain made him recall a conversation he had with Neil right after his other-verse counterpart healed the old damage in his ankle. "The human mind is a funny thing when it comes to pain. One day it is so bad that it blots out the whole world. Then suddenly it's the next day and it's still there. Then it's another day, and another. Somewhere along the line you realized the pain sin't going away, at least not quickly. It's not really getting any better, but somehow, some way you can learn to deal with it. You've gotta go on with your life. Then you either get better or the nerves start to die out or your mind just shuts them off so the pain isn't so bad." He then opened his hands and showed Ron the three titanium screws that had been imbedded in his ankle by the surgeons five years ago.

At the time he had marveled at how the screws had been removed. They were shiny and absolutely clean without even a trace of blood or bone on them. Neil told him how they simply emerged from his skin, the body forcing them out since they were not needed any more. At that moment Rufus appeared, along with one of the Argus' two cats, with whom he had apparently made friends. Moments later it was discovered the little naked mole rat had managed to wrap the other (and fluffier) cat in duct tape. He smiled, thinking of his little buddy, who had been left in the care of Wade. _I wonder if Rufus could get me out of this jam?_

His attention was diverted to a slight skittering sound. Forgetting himself for a moment, he turned his head in the direction of the sound, sending lances of fresh, bright pain shooting through him. Wonderful, they probably have swamp rats getting in here. _I've lived with a naked mole rat for six years and I'm still afraid of regular, furry rats! _

Something moved behind him. There was that skittering sound again! It was closer! In his mind's eye he could see it; a mangy, fat brown swamp rat with beady oil black eyes, cold, expressionless eyes with no real soul behind them. Opposing sets of sharp incisors dripped with foaming drool, ready to take juicy bites out of his large ears.

He felt it climb onto his good shoulder, brushing against his ear. He clamped his eyes shut, then, screwing up his courage he opened them and looked at the intruder.

There were those black eyes and a pair of HUGE razor sharp buck teeth right in front of his face!

However, there was no rancid brown fur. There wasn't any fur at all! Just a set of long whiskers and a tiny flyer's scarf tied around his neck.

"RUFUS!" he shouted, the pain in his shoulder and the haze of the medicine chased away by the joy of seeing his little pal. "Buddy, how did you get here?"

"Whoosh" the little rodent squeaked, pantomiming an airplane.

"Where's KP? Is she alright?"

"Dunno." He answered with a slight shrug?

Summoning all of his strength, Ron sat up. He concentrated on just getting his legs under him, focusing on his balance rather than the pain shooting through his shoulder. Rufus' unexpected appearance gave him the inspiration he needed to chance getting away on his own. Somehow he made it to the clear door, though he couldn't figure out how to open it.

His little pink buddy hopped off his shoulder and squeezed back through one of the air holes, disappearing down the hallway. Moments later he retuned with a magnetic key card camped in his massive buck teeth. Ron wondered for a moment how he was going to reach the card reader, which was set shoulder high at the edge of the door. Rufus could make a pretty impressive vertical leap but even doing that this would be far beyond him.

Rufus was way ahead of him. Realizing that Ron wasn't at one hundred percent right now, he liently hopped to the edge of the first air hole, then the next until he was on top of the card reader. He held the card in the slot and dropped to the floor, dragging it through it on the way. There was a soft click and the door popped open about an inch.

He was about to walk right out, but Rufus blocked his way, his tiny pink arms crossed. "Left me!"

"Buddy, we talked about this. We were spending an awful lot of time in the car. That wouldn't be good for you. Think how car sick you get." He recalled one of the less pleasant aspects of the mini-van ride to Kim's uncle's ranch in Montana, especially the return trip when they were all full of Slim Possible's chili (no disrespecting his cooking – even really good chili is great going down but you have – and those around you – have to pay for it later!)

Rufus put his paws to his chest. "Left me!" he squeaked again. "In trouble!" he pointed a tiny claw at Ron.

"Sigh, you're right. I'm sorry we left you. Tell you what, if there's any time left for our vacation once we're out of this, you can come on the rest of it." He winced again, wondering how he could enjoy his holiday with a gunshot wound. He chased that thought away with visions of Kim ministering to him, chasing his aches and pains away with her warm touch and tender kisses. He was drifting back toward the memory of the post-swimming pool shower her shared with her (suits on!) when he noticed a man imprisoned behind another Plexiglas door.

"Hey, if you're busing out of here, why don't you lend a guy a hand?" The man looked only slightly older than Ron, with a mop of unruly dark brown hair and ears that stuck out from his head almost as much as his did. There was something oddly familiar about his fellow prisoner.

With his good arm, he swiped the card. The tall young man immediately helped support him as they made their way down the corridor. They rounded a corner only to find a guard sprawled on the floor.

"How did you do that, Rufus?"

"Kissy Girl." He answered, pointing to a round lip-gloss container.

"Gotcha. Grab it and hop into my pocket."

"Did that thing just talk?" The dark haired teen asked. He watched as he scampered up Ron's leg, climbing into his usual cargo pocket. "What is that thing?"

"Naked Mole Rat. Pet of the future." He stuck his good hand out. "Ron, Ron Stoppable."

"Max Evans." He shook his hand gently, not wanting to jostle him too much.

"Where have I heard that name? Something about you is familiar, but I can't put my finger on it."

"I could say the same about you. You look familiar."

"Maybe you've seen me on TV, in the newspaper or something. My partner and I save the world on frequent occasions."

"Wait, aren't you Kim Possible's sidekick? The one who's always dropping his pants?" Max might have been the most serious looking person Ron had ever met, but he was trying to stifle a laugh.

"Number one, Kim is my partner…and girlfriend. Two, I don't drop my pants, they just tend to fall down sometimes, and that doesn't happen as much any more."

"She buy you a belt? Suspenders?"

"No, I've always worn a belt. It's just, she tends to make me buy my pants a lot tighter. Kind of rides up until you get used to it."

"Sounds like something Liz would do."

"That your girlfriend?"

"Wife, actually." Max replied.

"Liz, Liz, Liz? Why does that name seem important?" The last week replayed in Ron's mind.

"I don't know, since you've never met us before. We very rarely left Roswell before."

A light went off in Ron's head. "I've got it! You're from Roswell! We were just there a few days ago. I think we met your father-in-law. Ran a restaurant downtown with a sign shaped like a flying saucer. He figured we'd possibly run into you considering the life we lead. Imagine that."

"What did he have to say. I'm willing to bet he still doesn't care much for me."

"That's not the impression I got. I think he really misses you and Liz. Hey, she isn't here, is she?"

"I don't think so. I went down first when they grabbed me, but if she was here, I think I would know it."

They were interrupted by a series of gunshots. They dove for cover, new pain shocking Ron as his shoulder hit the wall. There was nobody in sight, though a series of alarms started going off.

"I think they're missing us." Ron said.

"I don't know. I think they're shooting at somebody else!" In fact, there was quite a bit of shouting coming from a room at the far end of the corridor they were previously traversing. One voice rose above the rest. It wasn't so much as shouting as chanting, in some language neither of the young men recognized.

There was a muffled 'foomp' sound and a man dressed in a non-descript dark suit shot out of the doorway, landing on his backside. He managed to hold onto his pistol and he brought it up, pointing it back into the room. He fired one more shot before a blast of blazing energy ripped the weapon from his hands. The agent, knowing he was in trouble taking on the new threat alone, scrambled for the nearby bulkhead doors, barely escaping another blast.

The figure that stepped into the corridor was no giant robot or villain in battle armor, it was simply a man, dressed in a now-tattered white lab coat. His hand was still wreathed in the coalescing energy he directed at the fleeing agent. He turned and immediately spotted the two teens.

"Evans, Stoppable! You have to get out of here quickly."

Ron suddenly realized who the speaker was. It was the doctor who had come to see him before putting him under again with the injection.

"Didn't you hear me? You need to get out of here before Starler can bring more agents in."

"Why, so you can dope me up again? You could have just given me something to deaden this pain!" He gritted his teeth though the agony of his left shoulder.

"There is no time to explain. I simply thought I could protect you better if you were in our control. I just found out there are other plans for Evans and his friends, plans that put all of my work in jeopardy. Now you must flee. Evans, you can heal Stoppable. It will make escape easier. Find Argus and get out of here."

With that, he waved his hands, causing a disk of energy that resembled a pool of metal. He stepped into it and disappeared.

"What did he mean by heal me? Are you part of those Trinity things like Neil?"

Max seemed shocked by the doctor's statement, but turned his attention back to Ron. He dragged him into the room nearest them and put his hand on the damaged shoulder. There was a surge of white light and for a fleeting moment he was once again wreathed in agony.

Then the pain seemed to simply melt away. Max took his hand from the spot, carefully pealing the bandage, revealing healthy pink skin. There wasn't even a scar where the bullet had entered.

"Wow! How did you do that?"

"It's a gift. What about this Neil guy you mentioned? Does he have healing powers?"

"Some. He found out about his powers last year and he's just now starting to learn how to use them. I don't think he could have done that, though he's supposed to be able to in the future." Suddenly, with the pain gone, he was aware he was not wearing a shirt. "Good thing it's summer. Now, let's get out of here and find Neil."

The two disappeared down a stairwell just as a group of armed men arrived to discover the now deserted lab of Doctor Oray.

Starler's fists clenched. The Master would not be pleased.

* * *

_Since it's concluded I'll respond to some reviews of "Motor Court Blues" here_

Campy - this is how I imagine Kim and Ron - basically good, moral kids who are exploring love. They are mature beyond their years but they're still eighteen year-old kids. Even though the last chapter was short, it was my favorite to write. (The funny parts had me giggling like an adolescent as I was writing them!)

Momike - Chapter 3 is pretty much it since it dovetails into this story. Glad you liked it.

MrDrP - that really means a lot to me coming from a master like yourself! (did I mention I'm really looking forward to Epic Sitch Eye Eye?)

JupMod - Thanks!

Mattb3671 - Chapter 1 was based on several real experiences. For instance, on a recent getaway to Gatlinburg I waited up till 12:30 to see a KP ep - and you can probably tell it was "Attack of the Killer Bebes" which I have on DVD and have seen maybe 20 times - gahhhhh! (still watched it all.) The final turnabout kind of wrote itself :)


	14. Revealed!

**_Trinity Sitch Part 2: Soulmates of the Fury_**

* * *

**Chapter 14: Revealed!**

* * *

Wade was working furiously, trying to figure out why he couldn't connect to Kim's particular Kimmunicator. His attention was diverted when Ron's unit signaled him once more.

"Wade, all hell is breaking loose in here!" Neil shouted over the sound of alarm klaxons. "Is there any way you can get a fix on Ron?"

"Nada from here, Neil. All I can give you is a heads up that a GJ strike team is closing on your position right now. Also, satellite tracking is showing a transport plane that originated in Atlanta is almost over you. I'm crossing my fingers about what that may be…"

"Wade, something is going on!" Liz rose from here spot at the computer console. The main pilot's console of the _Trinity_ had suddenly come to life.

"I'll get back to you, Neil. Wade out." He killed the connection and moved to the main pilot's position. The large main screen in the center of the console jumped suddenly from a status diagram of the ship to a course plot.

"Fasten your harness, Liz. I think this thing is about to take off!"

"How is that happening? I thought you were the only one able to activate it."

"There are supposed to be only three people on the whole planet who can launch this yacht. I'm one, like you said, the other is the guy who owns it who I was just talking to, the third being Doctor Possible, who you met."

Somewhere behind them the engines thrummed to life. There was a moment where their stomachs lurched ever so slightly as the gravitational generators activated and inverted their field, negating the pull of gravity as control jets lifted it into the air.

"I'm totally locked out. Something fed a priority program into the AI and I don't even know if Neil himself could override it. We're lifting off!

On the ground, Space Center personnel scrambled as the gray ship suddenly rose above the other rockets and space craft. James Possible was screaming into a special comm unit, but even that was locked out by the commands feeding from the powerful AI. He watched helplessly as the Trinity cleared the other ships and started drifting forward. The outer skin of the ship coalesced, the color changing surface readjusting to the unknown commands. This time it was not the green and tan the craft had borne when it was discovered or the iron gray it had adopted to hide among the space center vehicles. Now it was a combination of black, dark gray and blood red, with a narrow stripe of bright yellow running down its sides.

An FBI agent surveilling the space center dropped his binoculars as the yacht cleared the walls of the center, the engines flaring bright yellow, the ship streaking eastward faster than his eyes could follow. It wasn't even a dot in the distance moments after it left.

All he could do was report the ship was headed East!

* * *

Arcus Oray slipped into another of his transport discs, stepping aside through space and time, leaving the _Trinity_ behind. The device he installed in the central computer core of the ship was a combination of modern technology and his more arcane abilities. Forty years of preparation, from building a history as a respected physician and researcher, this discovery and hiding of Argus' ship, all the lore he collected and studied to determine if indeed the young man was actually the cornerstone of the triad of heroes he hoped to guide in defeating the ancient scourge of his world, a menace that now threatened all of the known universe!

It was almost five hundred years too soon! What had happened to make the Arkonians more on Earth this soon? The runes and the lore had foretold the 'Wisdom of the Effurien' would rise in this era. All he had to do was point the man in the right direction, finally revealing the hidden ship that would take the man to the time and place where he would confront Podondrin, the Master of Arkonia, the dark lord, possessed by the Arch-Demon Malendragma! It was in that distant future that the full Trinity would arise!

The signs and portents had, for a brief moment a year earlier suggested that the full Trinity had already formed. Somehow his arcane senses told him that the Wisdom, the Hand and the Sword had come together already! For reasons he could not fathom he could indeed sense Argus himself, his powers fully formed and ready to fulfill his destiny to lead both this planet and his home to a golden age, free from the danger and oppression of the Dark Master. Then the true ageless ones would rise! Not those who had extended their lives by use of the old powers, but of true immortals who had the ability to guide the rest of humanity.

However, by the time he was able to attempt contacting Argus, the premature Trinity was gone! Still, he could sense the young man, but he had returned to what he was supposed to be. The powers were there, weak, just forming. That in itself was a surprise. The powers should not have awakened until he was given the ring. Then he would have been there to guide him, to teach him how to access them.

It had been a true shock that he had already claimed the ship. Oray had to seek it out in the future and bring it back himself. Whatever events he had originally foreseen that would bring it to this time on its own would not now happen. The timeline he had surveyed by stepping aside from time was in flux, the danger growing that he would have to act without such guidance. Yet when he sought the ship to send it to him, it was not hidden in the deep forests of the east, but among other crude ships of the time much farther west!

No matter. Now it was time to fully reveal himself. Of course, that meant returning to face Starler again. How had another Arkonian come to Earth? He would have known if he had come from his own time in the distant past. No, this was a contemporary! If he hadn't been such a fool! Responding to the greeting like a novice adept! Insanity!

He was confident that he could handle anything the man threw at him. Arkonia was still in the clutches of a dark age brought about by Podondrin. Besides the dark powers granted the Master by the corrupted Effurien and the even darker powers the demon gave him, the most they could threaten with would be hoards of sword and spear wielding fighters. They wouldn't last an hour against this world's armies!

Unless…

The Trinity he had detected! If he could sense them, so could Podondrin! Whoever it was who had stood upon the soil of this world had brought the enemy, centuries too early! The Dark Master did not have the power over time that Oray had, but he had a year to prepare. His very heart quaked with fear that even now the Master's Palace, an ancient and monstrous starship that had stood in the very center of Daganshire since before his people had populated it, may have shaken loose of the stones that had clad it's exterior for a thousand years. This world had nothing that could stand against that kind of power. Not even the fully constituted Trinity could do so. Their power was against Podondrin himself, not against a technological terror constructed in the distant past by the same race that ascended to become the Effurien!

Oray wove a spell. He had touched the soul of the Powerful Argus, and even though he was once again diminished, he could still 'see' it across the ether. A new transport disk would form there and he would confront the budding hero.

And tell him that the Sword has risen as well! He had no real explanation other than the Effurien was moving to counter the enemy of the worlds the best way it could, by choosing other champions.

Against all logic, Ronald Stoppable was the Sword of the Fury!

* * *

"_I am not pleased. This news is very…disturbing." _The voice on the other side of the spatial communication lens said.

"I have failed you, my Master. I was unprepared. I confronted him armed only with my Terran weapon. I did not consider he would have taken the precautions that he had."

"_Where is he now?_"

"I do not know. My men have reported seeing him step into his own transport lens. Perhaps he has returned to Arkonia."

"_No. I would have been aware of his presence if he were this close to me. Did your underlings describe the lens he used?_"

"They said it appeared to be a pool of liquid metal in the form of a floating disk."

"_Then he is still close at hand. If he had fled across the void of space it would have taken him considerably more time using a simple transport lens. His presence means he has learned the identity of at least one member of the Trinity. That he has infiltrated your operation suggests that he may suspect the connection between the Antarians or you may have inadvertently been in contact with a Trinity avatar yourself."_

"Master, I believe the wizard was as shocked that I was an Arkonian as he was to be discovered…"

"No! This is too great of a coincidence. Sent the Antar King to me and dispose of the rest. Prepare yourself. If one of your prisoners is indeed our enemy then you must destroy him."

"What or the Royal Four's relationship to the Trinity?"

"Do not concern yourself with that any longer. With the King in our hands, they will have no power. Kill the Avatar. Another will rise, but this will gain us the time we need to complete the task."

The milky haze of the lens suddenly turned darker until it was the same quicksilver surface Starler had stepped through when he arrived on Earth. It was not a way home, someone, some…thing was coming through.

It was in the shape of a man, though armored from head to toe in obsidian plate mail that hugged the contours of its body. It stood over seven feet tall, with a great, eyeless helm. The neck guards were formed to look like upswept wings and the right arm ended not in a hand but in a blade that looked as if a battle axe and a broadsword had produced a foul offspring from their unholy tryst.

Starler's heart nearly stopped. This was one of his Maser's _Omnitrons_, soul-less automatons brought from the hidden depths of the palace. They were Podondrin's personal hunter/killers, deadly fighters feared even by the most skilled mortal fighters. Tales were told of how they would claim the very souls of warriors before marching off to battle. In his time spent on more technically sophisticated Earth, he had been able to guess their true nature. They were sophisticated battle suits, practically invulnerable to any attack. They did not claim the soul rather they claimed the entire wearer. Once sealed inside they would spend the rest of their life locked inside. That life would not be long as the suit drew its power from the body of the wearer.

More figures poured from the lens, men in rough hewn armor, clanking with long swords. Calloused hands grabbed him as the Omnitron split asunder. The battle suit hand not yet claimed a wearer! In one flickering moment he realized it would be him wearing it. He tried to struggle but the men held him fast, pushing him inexorably toward a suit of armor that now looked more like a hungry maw. They turned him and shoved him into it. The halves closed over his body, sealing him in forever. The helmet closed over his head, plunging him into utter darkness. He could feel needles and probes pierce his body on his arms, his legs, his neck, even his face. Something forced his darkened eyes open and there was fresh, sharp paint follower by a flicker of light. His vision was replaced with an image synthesized from the various sensors embedded in the armor. He could feel his own will slipping away, replaced by the orders his Master provided.

"Find King Xan and bring him to the lens." He said with the Omnitron's artificial voice. "Kill everyone else within these walls." The tall killing machine watched with subtle smugness as the Arkonian soldiers rushed to obey. More soldiers stepped out of the lens, this time bearing a new burden.

Jahan Starler was no more. His body still lived, sealed inside the mechanical tomb but his mind and soul were gone, claimed by the Master.

If he still lived, he would have shuddered at the sight of what the men carried.

* * *

"Fifteen minutes to target, ladies." The loadmaster of the cargo plane told Kim and Shego.

"I feel ridiculous." Shego pouted.

"Why?"

"Just look at me, Kimmie." She was dressed in a black shirt not too dissimilar to Kim's, though it didn't have her trademark bare midriff. It was also zipped up the front. She was also clad in rip-stop pants in desert camouflage.

"So, there's nothing wrong with what you've got on? What did you want, your old green and black catsuit?"

"It's not a catsuit, it's a jumpsuit. It's also my old Team Go uniform, thank you very much."

"Well, this is far more practical. For one thing, you now have pockets where you actually need them instead of way down on your leg like an ankle holster."

"How do you know that wasn't actually a holster?"

"What, you'd pull a gun? The woman who can shoot green lasers from her hands carry a backup piece? Perish the thought."

"Okay, yeah, you got me. That was pretty much my purse. So, Kim, how much do you remember of the beginning of, um, I think it would have been your Junior year in school?"

"Nothing in particular. Several days after it started we went on another mission. Why?"

"Okay, first day of school, you and Ron are walking out after cheer practice or class or something. He says something like 'first day of practice and he's in the zone' or something like that. Then the two of you just stop cold. Once you recover you say something about 'brain freeze.'"

"How on Earth did you know about that? GJ had you somewhere in Norway then but you didn't seem to be up to anything so they didn't bring us in."

"Well, I didn't really understand it at first, but Neil explained to me how all those other folks weren't from our world, they were from some kind of parallel universe thingy and that one of them was his counterpart."

"..and Dona was yours."

"Yeah, that's all kind of freaky. She had a really different name but she was somehow exactly the same person I am. Anyway, at the time we thought that ship was simply from the future, so while Drakken was running around ranting about how the main guns wouldn't work, I got bored and started reading some of the computer files. I tried looking myself up but all the references pointed back to you."

"Oh, I bet you were fit to be tied." Kim actually managed a smile.

"Thank you. Okay, so I get tired of everything I typed in coming back to your name, so I selected it. Instead of some boring historic footnote or something, I get this TV show."

"So, they are filming stuff about Ron and me right now."

"No, not that. It was a cartoon. Something produced by what looks for all the world like their equivalent of the Mouse-Ears channel here. So, I sit there and watch a whole bunch of it, some of them over and over. It was scary the details they had of some of our battles and such."

"So, you're saying that I don't exist in that world?"

"Apparently not, sugar. Seems you're reduced to a children's show. I told Neil about it and he said it was likely that certain things would be different, but things that happen in one universe exists as echoes in others. That just might translate to imagination."

"So what does that have to be with the 'brain freeze' episode?"

"Well, among those cartoons there were two much longer chapters. One detailed this one big plot involving Drakken, Duff Killagin and Monkey Fist teaming up to capture an idol called the Tempus Simia."

"The Time Monkey?" Kim asked, a quizzical look on her face.

"Seems you did okay in Latin class." She said, smirking at why Ron wanted to take it. "We got it, then went back in time trying first to break your spirit. The boys changed themselves into toddlers and tried to scare you on your first day of Pre-K. All they did was bring you and Ron together."

"Wait a minute, are you saying those three bullies were…?"

"Yep. You and I were fighting at a strip mall across the street."

"What was I doing there?"

"You got a time travel thingy from Rufus 3000."

"Oy, brain pain."

Shego actually giggled. "Long story short, the boys just couldn't hack it, so I stole the Time Monkey and started messing with the time stream myself. See, this is the coolest part: I ended up taking over the world myself. Well, it was cool up to the point when Ron went all Monkey Ninja…"

"You know about the Monkey Power?"

"Not a whole lot. Didn't pay as much attention to the chapters I wasn't in. Well, he went and broke the idol, whipping the time stream back to normal so you're all the way back where you started, coming out of school, then getting your brain freeze. That was time resetting itself. You forgot most of what really happened, well, all of us did except when we see or hear something that reminds us of what happened. Then it's like major deja vu."

"Time travel is a cornucopia of disturbing concepts."

"Bingo!"

Shego let her chew on that a few moments, then something dawned on her.

"That show Ron watches!"

"What?"

"He watches this show on the Mouse-Ears channel. It's called the Freedom Leaders. There was something familiar about one of the characters. Now I know who it is!"

"Never heard of it. Then again, I'm more into _Agony County_."

"Remember the blonde guy from the other universe?"

"Pretty boy with the swords?"

"Yes. That's him! I'm sure of it! What you said about echoes! Stuff happening there is echoing here and they made a cartoon show about it! Wow, I just realized, your counterpart is in it too! The commander's lady friend! The commander is Neil's counterpart, therefore the girl with long black hair is, for all intents and purposes, you!"

Shego frowned, not liking herself made into a cartoon in her own world.

"You know, I wonder if my birth mother would have named me Dona." She said aloud, though not directly to Kim.

"Instead of Sherry?"

"WHAT! How did you find that out?" Her eyes shot wide.

"Wade stumbled onto it last year when we were trying to figure out who those folks were. Wait? You know you're adopted?"

"Well duh. Found that out I lost my parents. People told me that me and my brothers were all adopted, but I never found out if Sherry was my birth name. All that stuff is sealed, so I never found out."

"Shego, look at me again."

"What?"

"Open your eyes wider!"

Kim leaned close. "Are you still wearing that makeup?"

"No. I washed it off when we changed into this mission gear. We're not exactly going in incognito."

Kim pulled a compact out of her cargo pocket, holding the mirror open for the black haired woman to see. "What am I looking…" her mouth dropped open as she realized what had happened.

Her skin had turned back to normal! On its own!

They didn't have time to ponder the change, as a sudden flash of light in the cargo hold blinded them momentarily. The light resolved into a disk of light. "Oh crap! There is a Rufus 3000!"

"I don't think this is a mole rat!" Kim shouted as a man stepped from the transport lens. He was tall, with dark features and black eyes. Something about him would not settle. In one moment he looked like a clean-cut man late in his middle ages wearing a tattered white lab coat, in the next he had long flowing hair almost as long as Shego's, clad in flowing robes that looked either new or ancient. They could not tell which.

"Who are you?" he asked the two women. "Where are Argus and Stoppable!"

"Neil and Ron?" Kim asked. "We're on our way to rescue them!"

"They are not here?" He asked, genuinely perplexed

"Doy. On our way _to_ rescue! Not have rescued." Shego said, sneering.

The wizard, which is what the two assumed he was, opened his mouth in surprise, then covered it with his hand. "You are the Soulmates!"

"The soul-whats? You gotta be kidding me!" Shego almost shouted. "Just cause I had a tumble with the guy once when I was a teenager and once a couple months ago? Give me a break here!"

"Shego!" Kim growled. "Neil means one hell of a lot more to you than that."

"Yeah, well, how would this Twinkie know about it?"

"Because I followed his soul to you. I thought I was on my way directly to him, but I found the two of you instead. It was my mistake, seeing the two souls together. I naturally assumed the Wisdom and the Sword had found each other."

"Wait a minute. You're talking about both of us? Are you saying you followed Ron's soul to me?"

"Are you his lover?"

"Well, I wouldn't put it quite that way, but we are engaged."

The wizard blushed slightly. "I, uh, didn't mean it that way. I was speaking more the way one soul loves another. The two of you have been soul-merged. Now that I see you, your merge is much, much older than I would have suspected in one so young."

"Hold on there geezmeister. I can see those two love-birds being lifemates or whatever, but we're talking about my ex-boyfriend here! What we had was in the past, over, done, finito. I'm just rescuing him because he's still my friend."

"I see." He said, as if he wasn't going to argue the point. Instead he simply cast his eyes to Shego's abdomen. She caught the gaze and wrapped her arms.

The transport lens suddenly appeared again, though somehow this time it was different. Something was within it and the all the light in the cargo hold seemed drawn into it. A dark hand seemed to reach out toward the wizard. Anger flashed across his face and he held up his own hand. Instead of defending himself against the intruder he created his own lens and stepped away, leaving the two women alone to face the apparition. They wondered a moment why he had abandoned them, but the first disk simply faded away as he disappeared.

They were left alone in the hold, standing in shock at what they had just seen and heard.

"We're over the target now." The loadmaster said. He had been up in the cockpit during the whole exchange, never knowing there had been an arcane intrusion in Able Senior's super-sonic cargo carrier.

There was no time for the two women to discuss the events further. They checked their harnesses one more time before stepping out into the void.

* * *

Neil leap-frogged over two agents, slamming their heads together as he passed them. He landed on his feet cat-like, sprinting down the corridor like a track star. Reflexes took over as a pair of P90 rifles were leveled at him. He dropped to one hand, swinging his legs outward, knocking the weapons out of their holder's hands. He spun his legs around again, catching one of them by the chin, following his body down to the ground. The other one went down with a wicked roundhouse. He grabbed the rifles and ripped the strange plastic magazines off the top, throwing them down a handy drain. He was off down the hall before the first two could recover.

He rounded a corner and almost ran into another strike team member. He grabbed the man by the lapels and slammed him into the wall, following the move with an uppercut to his chin. Sensing others following he dropped to the ground, rolling sideways, bowling the next man over. He got his legs tangled up in the man but he brought his hand down in a karate chop, striking a nerve cluster that would put his opponent down for at least ten minutes.

The yelling and screaming was getting louder. Something was going on that had the FBI men almost in a panic. Most of the strike team members seemed to be former military, so it concerned him what could cause men like that to flee! Certainly it was something more than just Ron and this Max fellow he was supposed to be looking for!

He skidded to a halt. There in what looked like a half-stripped lab crouched two men, hiding from the panicking fighters.

"Ron!" he shouted as the stairway at the end of the corridor erupted in flames and flying debris.

**_Next: The Heart of Arkon!_**


	15. The Heart of Arkon

**_The Trinity Sitch Part 2: Soulmates of the Fury_**

* * *

**Chapter 15: The Heart of Arkon**

* * *

Unbeknownst to two of them, three teams were converging on the hidden FBI base. Wade might not have been able to control the ship itself, but he was still able to operated the sensors. He knew the hover jet was only moments away and he could see the two parachutes descending as he approached. Somehow they would all arrive at the same moment.

Michael and Isabel burst from the transport, Wil Du bringing up the rear carrying a stop-rifle, a multi shot, more powerful version of his stop-watch. He fired twice, the two projectiles trailing thin wires. They struck the guards at the entrance and they went down in a flash of paralyzing electricity.

Liz's jaw dropped as she watched the monitors on the bridge of the _Trinity_. "Wade, open the hatch, I've got to get out there!"

"No, Liz, it's too dangerous. Let the professionals handle this…"

He was silenced as she held up her hand, tiny bolts of power rippling along it. "I'm not some helpless little girl, Wade. Those are my friends out there and I am going to help them find Max!" He simply nodded and she sprinted out of the control center, more jumping down the spiral stairs than climbing them. She was down the main ramp at a sprint.

Kim and Shego hit the ground just as Liz reached Michael and Isabel, dropping their chutes and heading to the group at a run.

"Miss Possible, it is agreeable to see you." Wil said as they ran up. "Though I am dismayed that the FBI report seems to have been accurate." He nodded toward Shego who had flared up and once more turned green.

"Can it you little Vulcan wannabe. They only sent that report out to get you off their trail and onto ours." Shego quipped.

"Agreed. Now our best course of action is to invade this base."

"Are we just going to stand outside jawing about it or are we going to do it?" Michael griped.

Shego had enough of it. Her hands flared up fully and she sent a blast of plasma into the entrance that had moments before been guarded by two men. The doors blew apart, leaving the entrance wide open.

Before they could approach, about a dozen men streamed out of the now ruined portal. Michael, Isabel and Liz automatically brought their hands up, ready to summon their powers to blast their way through the charging agents.

"Hold!" Du yelled. "They're not attacking us, they are running from something!"

"He's right!" Kim agreed. Despite the panic of the FBI agents, she was making her way toward the entrance. The reason for their flight was quickly apparent. Dozens of warriors waving monstrous swords, clad in ancient looking armor were streaming toward them, their voices at full howl.

They burst into the open and the battle was joined. Some of the agents were still armed and once they were in the open they turned and brought their weapons to bear. The trio from Roswell and Shego were better prepared, as their abilities came from within and were not limited to the number of rounds they had in magazines. At first they were picking their targets, limiting the amount of power they used, but it quickly became apparent that they would have to use much more, possibly even enough power to kill to make it through the attackers.

Kim moved in and out of the melee, leaping and vaulting over the larger but much slower fighters. She dodged a swinging sword, jumping upwards and landing a kick on the warrior's face. He went down with a resounding thud and clank of his armor.

Wade worked furiously, trying to bring the _Trinity's_ meager weapons online. The small tail-gun was active, but the ship was parked facing the wrong way. The belly gun had a lock-out designed into it to keep it from damaging the landing struts, but he was trying to bypass it. He wanted desperately to contribute to the battle.

What the barbaric looking fighters lacked in tactics they were making up for in berserker rage and numbers. Despite their skill in battle, it was obvious one of them would eventually go down. With the flash of a sword, Agent Wil Du fell.

Kim knew he was hurt and hurt badly. Without missing a beat she surveyed the scene. Shego was the closest to him. "Shego! Get Wil back to the jet! The rest of you, form up and blast your way toward the entrance, we've got to get in!"

Shego glared at her for a moment, but followed the direction, dragging the bleeding agent back to the jet. Two teens were waiting at the hatch and helped him get inside. Shego left him and headed back to the battle at full speed.

Kim was at a disadvantage in the battle, having to carefully place her kicks and punches. She learned quite quickly that hitting them directly in their plated armor just plain hurt and didn't do anything to stop or slow them down. However, inside that armor they were just plain men, and when she could get past it, they went down just like any other.

In moments the four of them, the trio from Roswell and Kim were at the entrance. For the moment all of the fighters were outside, though they were being occupied less and less by the remaining FBI agents, as their ammunition started running out. The last of them dropped his rifle and started running down the dirt road leading back to the highway. There were six warriors still standing, all turning their attention to the quartet pushing their way past the ruined doors. With a mighty yell they charged them.

They didn't get far as a blast of green energy bowled them over, leaving them unconscious and smoking in a heap.

"Let's go!" Kim shouted, the rest of them in tow.

* * *

Something was coming through the flames, oblivious to the inferno around it. It walked like a man but it was taller, bulkier. They could hear it's footfalls going 'clump, clump' as it walked. The head of the shining black and silver creature had no eyes, though it turned as if were surveying the scene. It faced the trio and in that moment they knew it had 'seen' them.

Neil caught sight of its arm, with the elongated axe blade. He almost missed the left arm coming up. Flame erupted from the arm, a focused, coherent stream of liquid flame coming straight at them. He could feel the white hot heat as it reached out for him, though his feet seemed to be rooted to that spot.

Suddenly he was sailing backwards, just out of reach of the tongue of fire. He landed on his feet, barely keeping his balance. Ron's hand was on the back of his collar. His other hand held the collar of the tall, dark haired young man he was with. He hadn't fared as well maintaining his composure and was half sprawled on the floor.

"Run!" Ron shouted "Yeah!" squeaked a small pink shape on his shoulder. This time he didn't have to be told twice. Whether it was a moment of fear or if the apparition had actually done something to hypnotize him, he had no clue.

They rounded several bends, finally finding their way to a staircase leading upwards. Neil thought furiously, but he couldn't tell where he was based on his memory of the floorplan. He had either gotten too turned around in their flight or they were once again in a new section. He fought to calm himself, but something was clouding his mind. Was he that rusty? Or perhaps the fatigue and abuse of his captivity was taking hold. Could he keep this up? The only thing he had even eaten in days was the meager fare his captors brought him, at least after they no longer doped him.

Was it the lingering effects of the drugs they pumped him full of? He knew they had to give him larger and larger doses of it to get any effect. Had they done some lasting damage, or was there some residual effect that was now taking hold as his energy waned?

Or, was it that voice in his head, the voice he could not quite make out? The voice that, for some unexplained reason kept translating to an old movie line? "Use the Force, Luke!" kept repeating over and over in his head. _Oh, good grief! Fighting for my life and all I can think of is crap from Star Wars!_

Then it dawned on him. He was expecting to find these two in cells. Once it became apparent that something other than their escape had put the base on high alert made him assume that they could still be safely behind locked doors.

"Ron? How did you?" Neil slid up to the two men, confused at seeing them free from their cells. Then he noticed Ron's condition. "I thought you were shot!"

"Max here healed me. It was badical!"

"He healed you? Cool."

"You're not surprised by that?" Max asked him.

"Well, I'm pretty used to being around people with powers. I used to date a superhero, you know. Besides, I have some slight healing powers too, though I don't think I could do anything as serious as a gunshot wound."

"Hi, Max Evans." The dark haired young man introduced himself and held out his hand.

"Neil Argus." He gripped the hand…

…and something happened! There was a sudden flash of white light where their hands met, followed by a different light, coming not from Max's hand but from the ring on Neil's left hand. His fist was surrounded in a purple glow that seemed to come from the softly glowing stone set into it. He hadn't seen the stone before, thinking the ring was only part of the electrodes Oray had put on him. Now he saw it for what it truly was…

…he recognized it!

It was the same ring his counterpart, Jimmy Argus had temporarily given him the year before, the ring that had awakened his powers!

No! It wasn't the same ring! That had been Jimmy's ring.

This was his! It was all making sense now! Doctor Oray was no doctor at all, he was the ancient mage Jimmy told him to look for. He wasn't Arthur Oray, he was _Arcus Oray_!

He could feel his power surging, as if something that he always knew was within him but lay dormant was finally awakening. It only needed something more, some slight thing that would allow it to fully blossom.

"What did you do to me?" he looked at his hand as the purple light faded.

"I…don't know." Max said truthfully. "Maybe my powers interacted with yours."

"Wow!" Neil held his hand up again. With just a thought the purple light once again surrounded it, growing in intensity. He willed it to stop, not knowing what the haze would do. It went out completely just as a trio of men burst into the room. Neil was too distracted to react as fingers tensed on rifle triggers. Fire burst from the muzzles, sending metal jacketed lead slugs hurling toward the three men. All he could do was grit his teeth in that split second.

The bullets never reached them. Max threw up his hand and a wall of pale green energy erupted, The bullets were caught in the field, suspended as if they had embedded themselves in rubber. The men fired again, with no more effect than before.

"Holy crap!" one of them shouted, though it was quickly apparent something other than Max's power display elicited the expletive. The sound of howling men reached the trio and they watched as the agents fled in panic. Something, some wave of invisible energy hit the entrance, causing the framework to buckle. It was followed by a blast of green energy.

Green!

A figure appeared in the doorway, a lithe young woman with flaming red hair. She was quickly joined by a slightly older, much more curvaceous woman and a tall young man with long, light brown hair. Bringing up the rear was a petite young woman with long dark hair and a taller woman with very long raven hair caught up in a ponytail, her face and bare hands a very light green, brighter green fire burning around those fists.

Kim almost knocked Ron over as she grabbed him, holding him tight and kissing him fiercely. The petite woman with Shego did the same with Max.

Neil almost didn't notice any of that. His eyes met Shego's. They locked together in a moment, something passing between them as it had many times in the past. He saw the fire around her hands go out and as he watched she slowly faded until her eyes turned brown and her skin was its original porcelain doll color once again.

He wasn't aware that they moved but he found himself caught up in a crushing hug. He held her tightly, knowing in that moment that he absolutely and totally loved her. It didn't matter if she couldn't or wouldn't love him back, he knew in his heart what she meant to him. She was his world, his everything. She was part of his soul and he was part of hers.

_The Soulmates have been reunited. Three pairs of souls, brought together in love and devotion. Three sets of heroes._

_The King of Antar, for he is a king by birthright and divine choice, not by just the will of a rabble or at the point of a sword, he is the key. With his Soul and the Soul of his chosen mate, he is the key, he is the one who will bring forth the Champions._

_For the Effurien, known to many as the Fury, it is entwined in the lives of all people, those of Antar, those of Earth, those who now lived on the planet Arkonia, even the pale skinned folk of Tor El Ka! Those who have ascended have chosen their champion. The first of the Trinity, the Wisdom! The first and greatest among them._

_The Sword has been chosen as well. For along with the wisdom there must be the will to do what is necessary. The sword is poised to strike for all that is just, for the greater good of all life!_

_The Hand has been chosen. The strength and the goodness, the power and the purity!_

_The Trinity of the Effurien stands ready to lead all from the days of darkness!_

"What just happened?" Kim asked, breaking away from Ron.

"I don't know." He answered. "It was like something just rushed through me, like a wave breaking over us."

"I felt it too." Liz said, still holding onto her husband.

"Shego? Neil?" Kim asked.

They didn't seem to hear. The two were locked in a kiss that seemed to go on forever. A faint purple glow seemed to surround him, mixing with a soft green glow that washed all over Shego. It wasn't her usual burning plasma, but a faint light that seemed to come from her whole body. The edges where the purple and green light met merged and swirled, blending, spreading until the two of them were bathed in the curling, two toned mist.

"Is that the superhero he used to date?" Max leaned over to Ron and asked.

"Used to?" Kim answered for him.

"Um, I think there is still a killer robot wandering around down here." Ron said. "Am I the only one who saw the big black flame shooting robot?"

"I don't think they can hear you." Isabel said, smiling a little as two people she had never seen before kissed as if the whole world had ceased to exist.

"What robot?" Kim asked, worried. "You said big, black and shooting flames? Is it some version of the Diablos?"

"No, Kim, it's something else. It's a lot smaller, but it did something to Max and Neil that made them freeze while it tried to fry them."

"Okay, then let's get out of here. We've got what we came for." She gave his hand a good squeeze.

_Beep-Beep-De-Beep!_

Kim froze. She hadn't heard that sound since the day Neil was kidnapped! Her hand dove into her pocket, pulling her Kimmunicator out. It was still dark. It wouldn't even power up now!

_Beep-Beep-De-Beep!_

"Ron, it must be yours!"

"I don't have it. I think I left it in our car!"

"Then where?"

Neil's lips finally parted from Shego's The swirling light disappeared and he looked around. Slowly he let go of her and reached into the slash pocket of the borrowed black jumpsuit. "I've got it." He tossed the unit over to Kim, who caught it deftly.

"What's the sitch, Wade?"

"Woah! I keep getting the wrong people answering these things!"

"Okay, then I'll just give this back to…"

"Never mind that Kim, I just couldn't get your Kimmunicator to activate. Something has happened to it. Big problems, the sensors of the _Trinity_ are going wild about something in that base!"

"If you mean a big, scary robot, it's already been spotted."

"I don't mean the _Omnitron_…" he began.

"Omnitron?" she queried.

"That's what the tracking screen calls it. I think the ship recognized it. It moved away from your position a few moments ago and activated some kind of device. That's what's bad!'

"What's bad?"

"It's activated something the computer is calling the Heart of Arkon! It's some kind of bomb!"

"Okay, so we've beaten them and they've activated the self-destruct. We're already on our way out of here!"

"It's worse than that! It's not an ordinary bomb!"

"They've got a nuke?" her eyes narrowed.

"No, worse. It's some kind of Anti-Matter converter. It's started a countdown and when it goes off, it will change a whole bunch of normal matter into anti-matter."

"And…"

"…and it will drop its containment field allowing the matter and anti-matter to mix. When that happens, there will be a massive blast of mutual annihilation."

"How massive?"

"If my calculations are correct, it's going to turn most of South Carolina and a big chunk of Georgia into a big steaming crater. It could be worse, it could take out the better part of the Eastern Seaboard! Kim, if it does that, it will crack the Earth's crust!"

"We're on it!" She broke into a run, Ron and Neil following close behind.

* * *

Neil ran with renewed strength, as if the brief moment with Shego had renewed him both in body and in spirit. It allowed his mind to focus on the crisis at hand.

Somehow he had to stop the Omnitron from setting off the _Heart of Arkon_!

He became aware that he was outstripping the others. Only Kim managed to stay close on his heals. He shouldn't have known where he was going, but somehow he knew that the creature was waiting for them at the center of the base, in a large circular chamber at the very foundations. In a way he sensed that the thing knew activating the bomb would draw him to it.

He skidded to a halt as he entered the chamber, Kim close behind. The robot, or battlesuit or whatever it was it stood there, legs apart, normal hand on its hip and bladed arm held at ready. Behind it was a spherical metal object held aloft on three articulated legs. Sound emanated from it, a low thrum slowly turning into a scream.

There was a loud crashing sound behind them as a massive door swung shut, trapping Kim and Neil inside. They would face the thing alone!

"So the Argus faces me without his precious Trinity! Fool!"

The artificial voice boomed around the circular room, though somehow it sounded familiar.

"Starler!" Neil raged through clenched teeth!

"Starler is dead. His body now powers this unit!" The Omnitron gloated.

"You realize if you set that thing off, you are going to die too?" Kim shouted, hoping beyond hope she could reach the agent trapped inside the battle suit.

"That I will die only serves the greater glory of the Master. With the Cornerstone of the Trinity dead, nothing will remain to stop his power. It will wash over his world and this one, finally taking the fools on Antar and the warmongering Torellians as his own. He will rule over all!"

"He'll rule over nothing but ashes. That device will destroy this planet!"

"So be it. The Mother Planet is no longer important. If it is destroyed then all hope of there ever being a Trinity to oppose my Master!"

"TO THE GLORY OF THE PODONDRIN!" It shouted, charging them finally.

Kim dodged a swipe of the massive blade, rolling out of the way. Neil barreled full force into it's midsection. Despite the great weight of the clanking armor, he bore it backwards a bit, until the left arm came up, striking his chest. He could feel his ribs crack and break under the blow. He rolled away in utter pain, the great sword end of the blade slashing his back, drawing blood.

Kim ripped Ron's Kimmunicator out of her pocket. "Wade, can you do anything?"

"On it!" the voice on the device answered. There was a screeching sound, much like he had once employed against Drakken's Bebe robots, but louder, more intense.

The Omnitron spun, facing her. It staggered slightly, then it's left hand flashed. Something streaked through the air, striking Kim's hand and the object making the sound. She grasped her hand, staunching the blood from the deep gash left by the weapon. She spared one glance at the ruined device. Something that looked like an oversized three pointed shurikin was embedded in it. The piercing sound had ceased.

The thing was still staggering. Whatever had been in that sound was still affecting it. Did it have some kind on internal processor that was damaged or scrambled? Or had the sound wave simply affected it's sensors? She didn't know and at the moment, didn't care. Ignoring the pain in her hand she ran, jumping upwards, bringing both feet crashing into the metallic helm of the creature. Pain rocketed up both legs as she met with the unyielding material, but it was enough. The head snapped back and it fell to the ground, unmoving.

The sound from the Heart was growing. The scream was turning into a whine which itself was starting to hurt her ears. She saw Neil pull himself up and start staggering toward it.

"We'll do this together!" she screamed, though she had no earthly idea how they would disarm the alien weapon. She was so engrossed in it she did not see the dark shape rising behind her.

Neil made a split-second decision. He saw the Omnitron's blade moving as if in slow motion. He could also see the _Heart of Arkon_ about to fire. He twisted his body painfully, grabbing Kim by the belt and part of the butt of her pants and threw her with all his might. She sailed across the chamber, screaming "Nooooo!" until she landed in a heap near the entrance.

The Omnitron's blade plunged into his chest, pain searing through him as the energy that rippled along the blade tripled the damage it caused. His vision started to fade, but the power was still flaring within him. His fist was wreathed in purple flame as it plunged into the _Heart_.

There was a sound like a thunder clap. It was the same sound heard when you are too close to a large firework. Only, here, there was no burst of sparkling, burning material, only light as only a small amount of matter had been converted to anti-matter. With the containment field ruptured, normal matter rushed in and was annihilated mutually. It was not a blast that would have taken out most of South Carolina and Georgia, but everything within a thirty foot sphere was blasted down to component atoms.

The Omnitron was gone, as well as the Heart…

…and so was Neil Argus.

Sparks from exposed wires touched off the last of the free-floating hydrogen until all that was left was a perfectly round crater. There was no sound save the popping and crackling of the enraged electricity. Even that ceased as circuit breakers automatically cut the severed connections.

Kim struggled to her feet. She was bruised, battered, cut and her left wrist was at least twisted but more likely broken. She limped to the edge of the crater and looked in. The thick concrete had a glassy edge and the Earth beneath the ten foot thick floor could be seen. Marsh water was already seeping in and would soon fill the bowl and perhaps the entire chamber eventually.

There was a booming sound as the doors finally burst, admitting Max, Michael and Isabel, their hands extended in front of them, ready to unleash their powers on any enemy within. Kim turned toward them and they could see the tears running down her face. Shego was right behind them, pushing past them and running up to Kim.

"Where, what?" there was a look of desperation on her face.

Kim knew that what had happened was slowly dawning on her. "He saved us."

"He's…?"

"He tossed me out of the way and did something to the Heart. It was destroyed and didn't go off, but he was…" She choked a little bit. "He was at the center of that blast."

Shego fell to her knees, starting to sob then threw back her head in a scream that shook the hidden base, green fire running from her hands, up her arms and even seeming to spill from her eyes in place of tears.

* * *

A small fleet of Global Justice hoverjets descended to help pick up the pieces. The surviving FBI were politely loaded onto a larger vehicle to await debriefing to determine who among them might still be culpable for the illegal actions of the Special Unit. Tybor had to be physically restrained as he raged against the 'invading alien hordes' the six from Roswell represented. It was Millard Bedarest, a hero of the Iraq war and former combat controller for the air force who finally dealt with him, simply walking up to the raving agent and slugging him in the chin. He dropped to the ground, glaring as GJ agents cuffed him.

Doctor Director gathered the Roswellians to her. "I will personally see to it that every hint of what has happened over the last year is officially stricken from the records. All of you can go back to your homes, to your families and start over without fear that your government will ever interfere in your lives again."

"Our government?" Max asked, puzzled.

"It seems, Maxwell, we're natural born citizens after all." Michael said, his arm wrapped around Maria.

"It's just a shame the people who started all of this won't pay, except for that slug Tybor." Isabel growled, though most of her thoughts were of her husband Jesse, who was waiting for her in Boston.

"In fact," Dr. Director said, "It seems that in order to take control of the Special Unit, Starler had a good many of the original conspirators eliminated. Whatever his intentions were concerning you six, he did not want them interfering. You see, originally their directive was to eliminate you as a potential vanguard for invasion. Starler wanted you alive, though, for what reason, I don't know."

"What about the mole you had in their organization?" Michael asked.

"I do not know what has become of her. She is not among those we have captured and her body has not been found inside the base. I'm not worried, she will eventually turn up. She is cut off from her home world and will no longer have credentials as an agent of the FBI. Besides, her service was invaluable. We owe her a debt of gratitude.

Liz's eyes wandered back over to the space ship sitting nearby. Wade was supervising a group of GJ workers, helping to load a small car into the cargo bay.

"Max, remember the space ship we were investigating in Middleton?"

"Uh, yeah."

"I think that's it!" She pointed at the _Trinity_. "Do you think it could carry the three of you back to Antar?"

He took her hand again. "If it does, it is carrying a lot more than three. There's you and Maria and Jesse to think about. We may even want to carry the Dupes back with us." The thought of the three remaining copies of them brought something else to his mind.

"Dr. did any of this involve another one of us? A girl, same age as us, blonde, kind of done up like a punk rocker?"

"You mean Ava? She is safe. All of this started when we had Agent Argus retrieve her from this base. She is now working with us and we hope to make an offer to her to become a full agent some time in the future. She was afraid at first, but now she is excited to become a contributing member of society."

Max relaxed a bit. He no longer felt that Ava was anything more than another member of his extended family. Even if the original Queen of Antar had been the bride of Xan, he as not that person. He was Max Evans and his bride, the queen of his world held his hand tightly. It was finally time for Liz and him to start a real life together.

* * *

Kim and Ron made their way back to the chamber at the foundation of the base. More of the water had seeped in, filling the bowl and lapping at the edges. Shego was still sitting there beside it, her back slouched and her head down. They could still hear her sobbing. Kim knelt beside her and put a hand on her shoulder. Ron held back a respectful distance, Rufus standing quietly on his shoulder.

"Wade has the ship ready, Shego. We're going to fly back to Middleton. Come with us, please?"

Shego put her hand over Kim's but instead of pulling it away she gave it a tight squeeze.

"You can't stay. They'll have people in here soon to start the investigation. I'm sure you don't want to be around while all those GJ folks are milling about."

"You're right, Kim. It's…I…" She sagged even more. "There for a moment everything was right in my world. There for that one bitty moment somebody held me in my arms that loved me no matter what, whether I was evil, whether I was a villain who tried to take over the world and one time even succeeded. I found somebody who was truly, truly mine as much as I was his and now…"

"Shego…Sherry," She looked up slightly hearing her real name. "He saved us all. He might have even saved the whole world. There isn't any greater love than that. He not only saved you, he saved me, he saved Ron. He at least saved all the millions of people who live in this part of the South. Come on." She gripped her hand and pulled her up to her feet.

Shego wavered just a bit, but Kim put an arm around her, steadying her. The two of them walked out that way.

"They're going to arrest me up there, aren't they."

"Don't worry about it. I just had a nice long talk with Dr. Director. As far as she is concerned, you aren't here. You never were. She's told her people to be on the lookout for a green colored woman with green glowing fists."

Shego stopped, looking at her hands. They were the same pale, mint green they had been for a decade. "Kimmie, you've got to be kidding."

"Concentrate. Think of good things. Think of the good times you had with Neil. Heck, think about the time he changed you. Think of that last kiss you had. Think of things you want to remember him by." Kim took her hands and held them.

She did that. The kiss, Neil's touch, his embrace. His smile, even that silly 'soul patch' beard he had grown in the last few months. She thought of their first time, that awkward and embarrassing moment back when they were seventeen. She closed her eyes, suddenly aware of her power. Not just her ability to turn it off and on, but aware of its true nature. She took the glow and diminished it, until it was just a tiny flicker in her heart.

Her eyes opened, to behold Kim smiling at her. She knew that she was finally just little Sherry Godfrey again, a girl who without a certain tragedy, might have been named Dona Marks.

She took Kim's hand and walked out of the new tomb.


	16. Epilogue

**_Soulmates of the Fury_**

* * *

**Epilogue: Where Do We Go From Here?**

* * *

They returned home with three days left in their original 'planned' vacation, though somehow spending those remaining days on the road didn't seem appropriate to them. Instead, there was a lot of time spent just talking. Kim talked to her parents, talked to Ron, talked to her minister, talked to Ron's rabbi.

She spent a great deal of time talking to Shego over the course of two days. Oddly enough, not much of that time was spent talking about the past. Ron rolled his eyes, calling it "Girl bonding" (sick and wrong was mentioned on several occasions) and left them be. For all the love he shared with Kim, he was still a guy and she was still a girl and there were things he could not (and would not) understand. Lack of understanding was one thing, the wisdom to recognize that lack was another. Ron had become very wise about these things.

There was a very long discussion about who actually owned the _Trinity_. Part of that discussion revolved around whether Neil ever owned it in the first place. It was eventually decided (after angry looks from Kim and Shego actually turning green again) that he did indeed. The craft was returned to the Space Center for study and storage until it was needed by his heir. Shego considered accepting ownership in the name of her unborn child, but instead decided it would be held in trust by the center instead.

They all used the ship one more time to make a flight to Neil's home town for the funeral. To avoid any awkward questions, Wade devised a holographic projection of an Oceanic Airways 747 over it for the flight. Holy Trinity Greek Orthodox church was filled to overflowing, including both Dr. Director and Wil Du representing Global Justice. Wil was much better, thanks to the otherworldly ministrations of Max Evans.

Max and his friends returned home to a joyous welcome from all their families. Liz's father actually made a game of exactly how much he could actually stuff down Ron at his restaurant.

On the third day, Shego disappeared. The guest bedroom she had been occupying was immaculate and she actually left a note expressing her gratitude to Kim and her family for their hospitality, though there was no hint of where she was going. No one was truly surprised at the turn of events.

It took GJ the better part of a week to help Wade set all of his equipment back up. The very day the FBI took it, GJ agents arrived with a warrant to collect the system and put it in safekeeping for the time being, considering the important secrets the computers contained.

Millard Bedarest left the FBI and was accepted as an agent for GJ, where he demonstrated an extreme aptitude for the work, as well as an uncanny ability to irk Wil Du (who remained very irkable!) with his cheerful demeanor, silly grin and his propensity for wearing his sunglasses _everywhere_! He was also smitten with another new agent by the name of Ava Harding.

Agent Tybor was found incompetent to stand trial and was committed involuntarily. Some months later he broke out and found employment with a super villain.

Yasmine Reth simply disappeared of the face of Earth, which was entirely likely in some minds considering she wasn't from Earth to begin with and she must have had some other means besides Starler to return home.

When Wade finally was able to look at Kim's mysteriously dead Kimmunicator, he found a bullet lodged in the battery. There wasn't a hole on the outside of the unit, so he had no explanation how it got there. He did discover that it was a 9mm slug, and not a round from a P90 rifle.

* * *

On the last night of their official vacation, Ron and Kim drove up to Durango. Ron even considered bringing Neil's old mountain bike, which was still hanging in the Possible's garage more than a year after he left it there, but Kim pointed out that it was a downhill racing bike and he had no idea how to ride the thing. He tried demonstrating he knew how to ride it but he didn't realize the thing weighed nearly fifty pounds (Ron's old purple Cannondale was just under thirty!)

The trip wasn't for mountain biking anyway. They splurged on a room with a king-sized bed and a wide-screen TV. The Mouse-Ears channel was showing a marathon of Ron's favorite show, so they climbed into bed around five in the afternoon, snuggled close and watched the cartoons till they ended at midnight. For the first time, Kim paid close attention to them, wondering if her theory about who these people were was true. Even with the heavily stylized style of the artwork, she became more and more convinced it was true.

Once the shows were over, Ron turned out the lights and they put their promise to wait to its greatest test to date. They did not fail, but neither of them was the least bit sorry. With only the comparatively short drive back to Middleton, they weren't worried about sleeping in the next morning.

They spent the drive back home talking about what the wizard Oray had told Kim. Neither of them knew what it meant that Ron was supposed to be this "sword thing" so they decided to let time reveal whether it would be an important part of his destiny. With Neil gone, they had no real link to it otherwise.

They drove home, also planning how they would announce their engagement to their families.

* * *

Shego was surprised how easily she slipped away. Maybe, just this once, Global Justice was willing to look the other way. So be it. In just over seven months she was going to have a baby, a child who would begin life without a father. Sherry Godfrey (somehow using her old Team Go code name just didn't ring true any more) was determined the infant would have a mother. How she would accomplish that was beyond her at the moment. Assets had been squirreled away, but she didn't have confidence that her caches would be there when she truly needed them. She had already been off the villain radar for over a year and it was unlikely many people would be willing to hire a self-described assassin and mercenary whose only well-known assignment was as more of a sidekick and bodyguard than anything else. Assassin? Drakken always assumed she had some formal ninja training, but she was not a trained killer. The only time she had ever killed anyone sent her on a spiral of madness that was the real time she lost her soul-mate.

No! She was not going to cry again! There had been enough crying all around. In all these years, she didn't weep over the loss of Neil the first time. She was too angry. Angry at him, angry at her brothers, especially Hego but most of all she was angry at herself. Her mind replayed the events of that day. The man she killed wasn't important. He was just an innocent person who had the misfortune of getting in her way when all that bottled up rage and emotion was given vent. She remembered everything about him, his face, so full of terror, taking its place with that of the unborn child she had lost earlier that year.

The remainder of Team Go had come after her and Hego, damn him, had for some unfathomable reason included Neil in the mission. Why did he do that? Neil left! Quitting his position as the GJ liaison! Hego hated him! Was it some extra measure of cruelty? Did her brother entertain some illusion that seeing her ex-boyfriend and near fiancé would snap her out of that madness?

Snap she did. There he was, his face full of dismay and pity. All of her rage and fear bust to the surface. All she wanted to do was escape that face, the face that had once loved her but now stood with this look of judgment over her. Green fire leapt from her fists, brighter and hotter than ever before. She grabbed him, the verdant plasma totally enveloping him. What was left of her sanity, of her inner goodness was burned away in that cleansing green fire as surely as it reduced the man she loved to ashes, just as it had that other poor man.

The flames died away and he stood there unharmed, a look of utter disbelief on his face. Just like her brothers, her power could not affect him. She raged then, still wanting to wipe that look of judgment from his face. She seized him by the throat with her claw tipped glove but some remaining shred of humanity kept her from ripping it right out. She shifted her weight and they both started going over. Almost blindly she brought her elbow down, putting the full force of her weight, muscles and power into the blow. From that moment until sometime in her nineteenth year all she remembered were his screams of pain as she escaped into the night.

For all her desire to prevent it, the tears rolled down her face anew. She was doing it again. She was running away, even though the one person she could count as a mortal enemy had offered her honest and unconditional help. Kim even offered friendship. She suddenly wished she could once again embrace the younger woman. Was it so bad to long for the love of friends?

_No! I am an outcast! It is no less than I deserve! This is my punishment for the evil I have embraced. I don't deserve friends, let alone love. That is what Kim deserved, wasn't it? She has parents, brothers, friends, soon-to-be-in-laws and most of all she has Ron, all of who love her._ She could renounce her past and repent her sins but that could never excuse any of it in the eyes of those she wished to love and, more importantly, in her eyes.

That was why she kept Neil at arms length for the last few months except for that one time, that one moment when they both gave into their longing. The shining instant that now was all she had left of him. He took her into his home, without question and now, now that it was too late she knew that he never stopped loving her. Now she knew the look on his face the day she maimed him, it wasn't judgment and pity, it had been despair, the utter loss of what he loved. He knew then that his future had been ripped away.

Her hand went once more to the shape that rested between her breasts. It wasn't the ring she foolishly rejected seven years earlier, a ring she knew still rested in a drawer at his house. She briefly entertained the notion of returning to Tybee, but she didn't want to press her luck with GJ. No, this ring was different. At a glance it looked like an ordinary wedding ring, but if you continued to stare at it you could see the deep purple stone wreathed in stylized flames. She didn't know why, but when she had searched in vain for his body it had been there, waiting. There was no reason to, but she somehow knew that he had been wearing it when he died.

Wiping the remaining tears she got up to leave Middleton for the last time. There was nothing left for her. Kim didn't deserve the heartache that would come being friends with someone who, essentially, was evil. She was walking away when an utterly unexpected voice brought her up short.

"Shego. Don't go, please."

Her mouth dropped open at the sound of that voice. Her eyes started at his feet. He had on battered hiking boots of some kind, blue jeans and a rather distressed looking leather jacket but his face was the same one she had seen for so many years. His eyes were dark, the heavy circles around them making them more so. His hair was just beginning to recede but the back was caught up in a short ponytail.

"How did…I thought?"

"Shhhhh. I guy dressed up like something out of Lord of the Rings brought me out. He explained a good many things, including what had happened to you." Drakken put a hand on her shoulder. She looked at his blue features a moment, then wrapped her arms around him, holding him tightly, desperately.

"I am so, so sorry Shego. Sorry for what happened to that young man. Even more so I am sorry that I left you behind that day. I have so few friends and what I did should have cost me even that."

"Friends?" she sobbed.

"It's so much more than that, but if you can forgive me and call me your friend, I will be content."

"I don't have friends. I just hurt people."

"The worst hurt you could do is to not let me help you now when you need it most."

"Drakken…"

"Drew. Please call me Drew. You are wrong, you know. You do have friends. Friends you might not even suspect."

"You say that like I might even consider the Princess a friend now."

"As a matter of fact, I just spoke to Kimberly Anne."

"You what?"

"You heard me. She told me I just missed you and that if I ever did anything to hurt you she would…well, let's just say she mentioned some things that would even make you blush."

"Drak…I mean Drew, I don't think I can go back to trying to take over the world with you."

"The we won't. I've learned about beings far worse than me trying to do that. I would hate to go through all the trouble of taking over the world only to lose it to some otherworldly demon. No, this man who set me free gave me a task."

"What is it?"

"I'm not telling." He smiled, some of his old evil mirth showing through. "I will tell you that part of it is taking care of you."

"I can take care of myself well enough."

"Maybe. Why not let someone who loves you help anyway?"

"Loves me? What?"

"Oh, come on, Shego. You think I put up with your sarcasm and insubordination because you were such a valuable employee?"

"But just as a friend?"

"If that's what you want. I've always been your friend. Well, except that time when I left you, or that other time when I…"

She looked at Drakken. For the first time she actually, honestly looked at him. He was kind of ugly, with the scar under his eye and that light blue skin (she always thought her skin, when it was green, was kind of exotic and sexy.) There was no way to sugarcoat it. He was just plain butt ugly! His tiny little hands were nothing short of creepy! (She had once seen a picture of him taken while he was in college and his hands had looked perfectly normal then!)

Oh snap! Who cares! Here he was, offering his friendship and obviously so much more. It may just be friendship right now considering there was still a raw, fresh hole in her heart that would take time to heal, if it ever would, but could she afford to throw another friendship away?

As a way of answering, she gave him a weak smile.

"Come on, Shego…"

"Sherry. Sherry Lynnette Godfrey." She corrected him.

Drakken blinked. Then he blinked again. In all the years he had never heard her even breath her real name. A moment later he offered his hand.

Sherry took his hand and left Shego behind.

* * *

Coming soon: More of the mysteries of the Trinity unfold in Part 3, coming soon to a computer screen near you!


End file.
